


Touched and Scarred

by Nenalata



Series: This One Scarred Universe [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Comeplay, Crests (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Emile (mentioned) - Freeform, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Family Drama, Fluff in Hindsight, Grief/Mourning, Intercrural Sex, Menstruation, Mentioned Miklan (Fire Emblem), Morning Sickness, Non-graphic depictions of labor, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Ships Not Mentioned in Tags, Pegging, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Canon, Pregnancy, Pregnant Sex, Sexy Margrave Sylvain Ooh Mr Gautier Ooh, Siblings, Unreliable Narrator, fine I tagged it because you all keep making fun of what i think fluff is
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-24 23:42:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 77,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22006396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenalata/pseuds/Nenalata
Summary: "I think I love you! And I mean that. With all my heart. I love you, Mercedes! Let's get married and have Crest babies!""Sure, sure."~*~“We don’t have a lot of family to share with each other, huh?”“I’m glad you’re my family now."They promised to share in each other's pain, but it's easier to soothe someone else's than to bare one's own.Tugging a sleeve down to hide an open wound doesn't help it heal. And Mercedes should know better than anyone else how much her and Sylvain's bodies are littered with scars, much less their hearts.A sequel toThis One, following Mercedes's and Sylvain's journey together as the world within and beyond Castle Gautier's walls changes.
Relationships: Sylvain Jose Gautier/Mercedes von Martritz
Series: This One Scarred Universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1584040
Comments: 410
Kudos: 431
Collections: Honest Reasons to Fight





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from [Fighter by X Ray Dog](https://youtu.be/p1rmNeSfYEk) and I hope you like it as much as I do~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, welcome back! If you're starting fresh and haven't read [This One](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20766740), I strongly encourage you to slog through that 72000 word monstrosity. Their history together might not make as much sense.
> 
> I'm really happy if you decided to join me again! I've been looking forward to writing the sequel since. Uh. Chapter 4 of the first story. We start off small with the prologue and move into larger chapters later. More world-building this time around than sex sex sex, but you may not believe me. _I promise, though, please, trust me,_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So as we can (hopefully) expect this of Mercedes&Sylvain, but the beginning of this fic deals with complicated emotions regarding having kids and pregnancies. It's purely emotional stuff of the two of them working through stuff together as they transition from their Complicated Emotions in _This One_ until now, not anything like...dire or ominous for the two of them! But I did want to give you all a heads-upright away that we gotta follow that "We Will Work Through Our Problems Together As A Family Goddess Damn It" to get to fluff n politics.
> 
> Now then! Let's-a go!

It’s Sylvain who brings it up, not her, and for that Mercedes is relieved.

She’s half-dressed in his lap. He’s unlaced the front of her nightgown and brought her breasts out and over the open bodice, kneading one in his hand while he does dangerously delightful things to her neck with his mouth. It’s always this breast he goes for first: teeth, tongue, fingers, hands, lips. Mercedes has never known why and doesn’t really care.

She likes touching him. And right now, she _is_ , her other breast pressed against his bare chest, her fingers tickling the hairs on the nape of his neck. She can _feel_ him pushing against her, hot and hard and practically throbbing against her stomach. When she shifts, he moans against her skin, fingers pinching her nipple to make her yelp, and Mercedes know she hasn’t done anything specific except let him know—

“You’re so _wet_ for me.”

Mercedes doesn’t care how many times he’s said that to other women. He’s said more things to her than he ever has to one past lover alone. One day, he’ll have told her things like this more times than all lines to all other girls combined.

She doesn’t even care about _that_. Sylvain’s saying it to _her_ and he sounds just as shocked and growly as he did the very first time he felt her.

“I’m _ready_ for you, too,” she purrs back, sealing the sentence inside his mouth with a fast, desperate kiss. She rocks against him so he can feel her better, and the shivers down his spine pebble under her exploring fingers.

When she reaches the top clasps of his pants, Sylvain places his hand over hers. “You wanna…” He swallows, and the look he gives her with those almost-black brown eyes tells Mercedes she’ll want to say _yes, yes, please, yes_ to whatever question he’s about to ask. She doesn’t get to enjoy it much longer, however. He tugs her hair to the side and grazes his teeth along her neck, grinding against her in the same motion. There’s a laugh in his voice when he says over her incomprehensible moans, “You wanna feel me inside you tonight?” A pause, enough of one Mercedes can tell he wants her to clear her head. “ _Just_ me inside you?”

Mercedes has never forgotten how it had felt the one and only time she’d felt _just him_.

They’d never talked about it, really. Not properly. Sylvain had stopped…stopped _driving_ into her with such speed and power and skill she’d almost forgotten they had never done that, never felt each other quite that way, never needed to learn each other’s bodies, what each other liked.

He’d stopped. Suddenly. Pulled out, softer than he’d gone in. And told her he didn’t think he could come inside her.

Mercedes had been utterly, selfishly terrified that had meant they’d _stop_. That he would get dressed, and she would get dressed, and they’d both fall into such uncertain embarrassment that it would take weeks for any sense of normalcy to restore itself.

But then he’d flashed that now-familiar _grin_ , the one that sent something smooth, slow, and dark curling down her back like syrup. And it wasn’t long before Sylvain was back inside her, not just him but slick, oiled leather. And while they’d tried others, other textures, other… _interesting_ effects, and each of them had their favorite…

It was never ‘just him.’

And something in Sylvain’s expression right now, the way his gaze is boring into her, how _hot_ he is between her thighs…Mercedes doesn’t think she’s going to get an answer as to why now.

She can’t muster enough reason within herself to care much, either.

“Yes, _yes_ , please, yes.”

Things move fast from there. Sylvain kicks off his pants the rest of the way, Mercedes tosses the nightgown over her head smoothly enough Sylvain whistles, he rolls her over beneath him, sinks into her with an incoherent curse.

“So _fucking_ —made to be in you, _inside_ you—”

Mercedes shudders, wraps her arms around him, brings him as close as she feels their bodies will let them and then closer still. She likes it when he swears and has a hard time admitting this to him, even if Sylvain suspects as much.

He doesn’t like it when she tells him how beautiful he is, how good he looks.

He likes it when she tells him how he _feels_.

“I love this, love you,” she mumbles, letting the force of his thrusts rock her back into the mountain of pillows they keep by the headboard for nights like this. “I _love_ this—”

“Yeah?” Sylvain speeds up, _hot_ and _smooth_ inside her, and he pulls her fingers from her mouth. She hadn’t realized she’d even covered her own embarrassing sounds. “Tell me. What do you love about it?”

His voice like this, oh Goddess, his _voice_ when he talks like this—

Mercedes moans.

“ _That’s_ not much of an answer.” Sylvain holds her _impossibly_ closer, pressing her down into the sheets. He throws her legs over one shoulder, _pushes_ her into the mattress, the angle changes— _oh, Goddess_ —and he slows down. Deeper. Slower. Liquid heat, she can’t— “I wanna hear _words_.”

 _Words_. Mercedes latches onto them.

“Deep,” she gasps, burying her face into his shoulder. “S-slow, and—like you’re…”

“You like it slow? Like this?” Even _deeper_ , even _slower_ , Mercedes forgets words again and Sylvain’s starting to sound like he’s about to forget them, too. She tightens around him, mostly unintentionally, and he makes the smallest gasp before he stays _deep_ but the rhythm _changes_.

He’s close, maybe even closer than her. She only knows because _she’s_ close, and Sylvain always has this little fast intake of breath. Like he’s relieved she’s almost there. Like it gives him permission—or maybe just pleasure, satisfaction at bringing her there first. Mercedes isn’t quite sure why he won’t finish until _she_ does, and it doesn’t seem like something she should ask about.

So she doesn’t ask. Hasn’t. Sylvain always knows she’s about to come before _she_ even knows, and that in turn lets her start to fall apart, chase that shivery heat because he speeds _up_ , and he’s about to come cursing against her neck, _just him inside_ , Sylvain wants to—in her—and that’s oh, so exciting, wonderful, almost—almost—

Sylvain practically chokes out a gasp and he’s out of her.

Suddenly, Mercedes is cold and empty and startled. She’d almost been there with him, almost, almost, Sylvain had almost—

He looks _wild_.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Breathless, strained words. Sylvain flinches back when Mercedes tries to reach for his suddenly-bloodless cheek. “No, I’m sorry. I _can’t_.”

There’s something blank and unseeing in his expression. Not the dark fire Sylvain sometimes lets slip on nights he’s scared to get rougher, refuses to believe her when she says she likes it, likes when it’s intentional.

It’s something beyond terror. And Mercedes’s frustration melts.

Almost.

 _Almost_.

Sometimes her body doesn’t care about her heart or mind. She still wants to touch him, even if it’s just to hold him, let him feel her love wrap around whatever fragile part of him nearly just got crushed. But Sylvain has thrown on his shirt. And his pants. Like armor.

Protecting him from her nakedness.

He slides off the bed—sidestepping her fallen nightgown—goes to the window seat, presses his forehead against the stained glass next to the liquor cabinet. Next to where they keep that box of…’toys,’ mixed with the contraceptives. The things he refers to in jest, with ridiculous names.

Next to the things that give him comfort.

But he doesn’t reach for them: not the box, not the liquor.

And he’s not next to the bed. He doesn’t reach for her, either.

* * *

Sylvain tells her he’s going out with friends the next night, so Mercedes is hardly surprised by what happens when he comes back. She knows those ‘friends.’ They’re friends from the Dukedom days, friends he used to look for _company_ with; gamble with; drink with; and he only sees them when he doesn’t realize something’s haunting him.

Or sometimes when he does.

“Mer _cedes_ ,” Sylvain singsongs when he comes back. “ _Divine_ as always.”

It’s late.

She’s bathed. Washed the makeup off her face. Removed her jewelry. Brushed her hair. Thrown on her favorite, softest, comfiest nightgown.

Its long sleeves and long skirt cover a lot. Going by the dark gleam of her husband’s eyes, firelight turning the bittersweet brown of his irises almost crimson, she’s sure Sylvain thinks she might as well be wearing lingerie.

“Welcome home, darling.” Mercedes suspects she can guess what he’ll do, watching him stalk over to her like a starved wolf. She doesn’t like how she’s almost right.

“’ _Darling_ ,’ is it?” Hands on her waist, thumbs stroking below her ribs, still gentle despite that unpleasant, teasing tone. The thick, deep darkness in each of his words. “Isn’t _that_ lovely. I’m your _darling_ tonight.” Sylvain’s smile flashes into a sharp smirk. “Your _loving_ ,” hands on her waist, “ _tender_ ,” greedy thumbs sliding up her ribs, “ _beautiful_ lover.”

Mercedes stays motionless. He’s not drunk enough to be acting like this. She can tell—there’s not enough wine in his breath, just a hint of sweetness from plain tavern bottles. It takes a lot of liquor to get him even noticeably intoxicated, because he’s _big_ and he’s _muscled_ and—and he’s making her skin prickle with anticipation even though he’s trying to make her feel trapped.

“No,” she says. Sylvain _was_ smirking, but that faint smile falters. Mercedes keeps her voice even. Confident. “You’re my husband.”

“Right.” The word’s icy. Sylvain drops his hands like he’d scalded himself on her skin, her nightgown. “ _Your_ husband. You really caught a mess of one, didn’t you?”

It shouldn’t be a surprise he’s getting like this. Hating himself past the point of self-deprecation, covering his ears to reassurances. Sylvain hasn’t been able to look at her all day, and each time he tried to hold a casual conversation, he clearly was forcing himself. Mercedes isn’t sure what time he’d come back to bed the previous night, if he’d come back at all; he’d been out training the new cavalry regiment when she’d awoken.

But with him like _this_ , Mercedes doesn’t have a lot of patience. Or reassurances.

“I love him. I love _you_.” She doesn’t refute his claim, that he’s a _mess_ , and the corners of his eyes tighten. He’s noticed. “And you’re trying to punish me for that, aren’t you?”

Sylvain barks a humorless laugh. “Me? You’re punishing _yourself_ —”

“Sylvain,” Mercedes snaps. “You’re punishing yourself, too. And don’t go pretending you’ve…you’ve had too much to drink, that this is your _true_ self, that you love someone who doesn’t actually care about you.”

Each of her words propels him back more. Step by step, he backs away from her, boots silent on the floorboards. The grin he gives her isn’t kind. And it stings to look at, even though Mercedes logically knows he’s aimed it inward.

 _Patience._ Just a little more, just a deep breath, just calm words—

“I’m not angry with you. For last night.” He _jolts_ like she’s shouted, and Mercedes’s heart tugs itself back and forth between sympathy and hurt. “You _tried_ , and you were—it was _marvelous_. We took it slow to get here, didn’t we? I’m happy you wanted to—you tried to—”

“Yeah, I _tried_ to have sex with my wife.” Sylvain rakes a frustrated hand through his hair. His laugh echoes in their empty-feeling bedroom. “I’m so—so fucking—”

“It’s unfair of you to _blame_ —”

“Who the _fuck_ am I anymore?”

The outburst shuts her up. Sylvain keeps tugging at his hair, one hand after another, like his head will fall off if he stops. He stares at nothing.

“I don’t know who the fuck I am anymore.”

 _You’re my husband_ , Mercedes thinks, knows she shouldn’t, can’t say. _You’re the man I’ve grown to love, and I will never know all the unkind paths you’ve taken that brought you to me_.

Mercedes doesn’t like the trail of her thoughts. Pity isn’t what he needs right now, and she’s in no position to give it. “I can’t answer that for you.”

He’s still frozen in place, stiff shoulders and tight jaw.

Mercedes hates how badly she wants to touch him.

“You’ll still be you if you come to bed,” she tells him. And the air whooshes out of Sylvain’s lungs, breath Mercedes didn’t know he’d been holding in. His fingers unbutton his shirt in rapid, jerky movements.

“Whoever that is,” he mutters. She hears a button clatter and roll along the floor and forces herself to walk to their bed, not to tell him to calm down, slow down, the shirt hasn’t done anything wrong, not to put her hands over his and get him to _stop_ …

She thinks she can hear his heart hammering through his skin, pulse racing through the mattress, when he finally joins her.

Mercedes is on her side. Sylvain is on his back.

He _never_ sleeps on his back. She’s sure both their eyes are wide open. Tension vibrates between the two of them until Mercedes imagines she can feel its harsh, metallic taste on her tongue.

She rolls over, still on her side, but facing him. And even though lingering, irritating pride keeps her from snuggling closer, it doesn’t take long for Sylvain to sigh again and shift onto his stomach.

He doesn’t try to hold her, either. Mercedes is equal parts relieved and annoyed. But then she feels his hand slip under her pillow—no, Sylvain has half under his, half under hers. The warmth of his skin bleeds through the fabric.

And even though she wants to touch him so badly, as if he hasn’t behaved so poorly tonight, as if she’s not hurt and frustrated, as if _he’s_ not hurting and frustrated…

It feels a little better. And it doesn’t take her as long to fall asleep as she’d feared.

* * *

“Captain’s going to have my head,” Sylvain spits apropos of nothing, charging into their bedroom as if he’s just said ‘hello.’ It’s that brutal, barbaric energy around him when there’s some problem with their troops or with Sreng or both. Mercedes sips her tea and watches him—him, out of armor, struggling to find a cloak of some sort—unsure if she should interrupt.

He’s not even wearing boots. He must have charged up here as soon as—

“Where’s your squire?”

Sylvain can’t even manage a laugh. “Probably fumbling with my armor. I don’t know. Poor kid.” It’s not just war clouding Sylvain’s aura. “Someone should give him a good, I don’t know, a good meal, a—”

He coughs, and while Mercedes know he’s trying not to cry for some reason, she pours herself a new cup of tea. Albinean sweet berries, dried and tart-sweet in a flowery, herbal mix. Sylvain will drink it to keep her company, but it’s not his absolute favorite. It’s calm tea, alone-time tea, for the quiet hours she takes to herself to embroider and write letters when Sylvain’s out training the constant stream of new recruits. Even if the last two nights had not been so uncomfortable, Mercedes hadn’t expected to see him today at all.

“Do you want me to ask someone…?”

“No.” Sylvain’s hardly paying attention now, but he somehow swivels around to face her. “Please don’t. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

The formal cloak’s securely fastened around his shoulders. The blue and crimson one, the one with the Crest of Gautier embossed on its back.

“I have to go see my father.”

And he’s gone, whirling out of their quarters as suddenly as he came.

It doesn’t come as much of a surprise when Sylvain’s mother takes her aside later and informs her the Margrave is very ill and may not survive the year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I exist on twitter as [@NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites). Come play!


	2. Red Wolf Moon, 1187

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the excited response! I'm really happy to see familiar faces in bookmarks and comments :D You inspire me with them! Keep hitting me with 'em!
> 
> (leave me alone about the sex; it'll calm down eventually; leavE ME ALONE IT'S NOT THE PLOT THIS TIME)
> 
> come judge me on twitter. I'm [@NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites).

“Hey,” Sylvain tugs her sleeve as she makes to rise from the edge of the bed. “Thank you.”

Mercedes sits back down, not bothering to hide her puzzlement. She feels rather underdressed in her simple gown compared to him. Sylvain has dressed already, but it’s in the thickly-padded clothing he wears under his heavy armor. Training new recruits. Again.

But he’d taken the time to comb her hair in pleasant silence. _Something_ had vibrated in the air between them, words hanging unspoken and cautious.

“You’re welcome, darling. But what are you thanking me for?”

His smile’s as sheepish as she thinks she’s seen on him. “I haven’t really been on my best behavior, huh?” Before Mercedes can even think of an appropriate reply, Sylvain presses his mouth into a hard line and shakes his head. He lets go of her sleeve and rakes his fingers through his hair. “No, sorry. That’s not what, not how I meant to put it. I’ve been a real bastard to you.”

The word choice is so _specific_ Mercedes can’t help but laugh. An inch of tension drops from Sylvain’s shoulders. “Well, guess that means you agree. I’m not saying it to look for…” He struggles to choose some other specific word and shrugs when he comes up empty. “I’m not saying I…won’t be a bastard sometimes,” he says slowly, a small crease in his brow. Mercedes stares at it, like it’s proof of the effort he’s making to be sincere. “But that doesn’t make it okay, and…thank you. I mean it. Thank you for not pretending it is.”

Mercedes fights to keep herself expressionless.

“Thanks for helping me remember I’m not…someone I’m not.” Sylvain laughs, too, but it’s an embarrassed, frustrated sound. He rubs the back of his neck. “Wow, me and my honeyed words, huh?”

“You know I prefer seeing the real you,” Mercedes reminds him, touching his hand gripping the heavy winter quilt. His smile’s lopsided.

“Well, the real Sylvain likes seeing the real Mercedes, too.” The whisper of charm edges his sentence, and Mercedes wonders if he even realizes when he latches onto such old habits. Something familiar to give him security.

Sylvain bends down, and Mercedes waits for the kiss. Her body prickles with anticipation while her mind scolds herself for not pushing the issue. But he merely presses their foreheads together. “We share in each other’s pain, right? Whatever’s hurting you is hurting us both. Let’s never forget it.”

He doesn’t need to name anything. Mercedes knows without having to ponder too long.

His father. His mother. The changes. The friends. Him and his masks, the ones he doesn’t even realize are still there.

Her and hers, the ones she keeps forgetting he sees behind. Not even the ones she hasn’t warned him are there.

“You make me happy,” he says, startling her. Sylvain’s lips quirk in a shy grin, one almost unlike him. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. “Heh. I like when you don’t notice your own smile.”

Mercedes _is_ smiling. And no. She hadn’t noticed.

What a sweet bruise it is to be loved by someone who’s lived through such different pain.

* * *

It’s as good a time as any for Mercedes to visit her mother.

The autumn air’s bite comes a little softer, even with the Red Wolf Moon prowling around the edges of this month. Fiery leaves crunch underfoot. Gautier guards accompany Mercedes’s more delicate stroll through Fhirdiad, past the church. But they’re all blessedly quiet when they enter the graveyard.

She hasn’t told Sylvain she’s coming today. It doesn’t seem kind with the Margrave so feeble.

The last sprig of lavender’s dried by Mother’s grave. One of the reasons Mercedes loves lavender so much is how nice it smells even when it’s no longer fresh and of use. She sets a fresh bundle anyway, keeping the old stalks company.

“Hello, Mother.”

Mother doesn’t respond, but Mercedes doesn’t need her to. How funny would it be, though, if she had? What a ghost story to tell—

She plops on the grass in front of the grave and tells her mother about her day. Her week. Her in-laws, their hurts. Her husband. His hurts. Hers.

And then she tells her the good things. The letters from her friends. The recipe the cook had slipped her for lemon dumplings when her mother-in-law wasn’t looking at dinner. The picnic Sylvain had taken her on as soon as they’d arrived—although she does leave out their activities in the gazebo, on the blanket, or on the walk back once the basket had been packed up.

Mother hadn’t survived the war long enough to see her daughter fall in love, live happily ever after, but Mercedes isn’t going to let that stop her. So she ensures she always has more good things to tell Mother than bad.

“Oh! And how could I forget? We have a new crown prince.” She smiles when she hears the guards behind her mumble a prayer for his protection. “I hear Ingrid had an easy time with his delivery. I haven’t met the little boy yet, but we’ve come on this trip to the capital to visit him. You would have had such a lovely time with the festivities, I’m sure. They really are going to go all out, so Annie tells me.”

Mercedes offers her mother one last smile and finishes up her chat. She pats the soil by the grave as a promise to see her again. The guards escort her back to the castle without much fuss.

It’s always the same troops who are her personal guard for this simple trip. Mercedes doesn’t think Sylvain even realizes.

They like the peacefulness, too.

* * *

“He’s so squishy!” Annie laughs, squeezing Crown Prince Armel’s arms. They are indeed very chubby, and the baby blinks owlish, confused green eyes at the woman bouncing him on her lap. “Like a little blob of cute.”

“Cute for a piglet, maybe.” Felix snorts and folds his arms over his chest. Prince Armel takes the opportunity to latch on to the single finger peeking out from the dismissive gesture and _squeezes_. A flash of the Crest of Blaiddyd’s shape, an audible crack resounds, and Felix swears viciously. The sound startles the baby into releasing him, and he starts crying.

The baby. Not Felix, although Mercedes suspects he wants to.

“I can—”

“I’ve got this, Mercie.”

Annie fusses over her wounded, grimacing husband while Ingrid doesn’t bother hiding her satisfied grin. She plucks her wriggling son from Annie’s lap and takes over soothing duty. “He doesn’t like it when you insult him.”

“He’s a baby,” Sylvain snorts. Mercedes leans into him meaningfully, and he doesn’t even glance at her, just throws his arm over the back of the bench and lets her cuddle into his side. “He’s, what, a month old? Two?”

Sylvain has not asked to hold the prince, and Ingrid has not offered to let him.

“Two.”

“Ah, right. Forgot that’s when _insult comprehension_ kicks in. You know, developmentally.”

“I didn’t even insult him,” Felix complains once Annie’s magic snaps whatever injury he had back into place. “I said he was cute.”

“For a piglet,” Mercedes reminds him with a smile, and Sylvain gives her a quick, affectionate squeeze.

“Yes. So? Not an insult.”

“I bet you were a terror of a baby,” Annie says to Sylvain, grinning. “Always vying for attention, crying when a _lady_ let go of you.”

Mercedes shakes her head, but it’s too imperceptible. Annie doesn’t notice the warning. The teasing grin stays on. Sylvain, for his part, shrugs. Loose, at ease. “More Felix than me. He was _adorable_ as a crybaby.”

Mercedes is more surprised than maybe she should be, how his oldest friends don’t pick up on it. How he’s _too_ loose, _too_ at ease. It’s simple to notice when Sylvain’s caught in a complex lie, one he doesn’t know how to deal with. His eyes turn dark. His smile sharpens. The muscles of his body get tight.

But this is an easy lie, apparently. Lying to Ingrid and Felix about what it was like to grow up in House Gautier? A familiar one.

 _Easy_.

Mercedes puts her hand on Sylvain’s thigh, suddenly overcome with emotion, and he rests his palm on top. While Felix, Ingrid, Annette, and Armel all laugh and complain in various degrees, he leans in close and whispers in her ear, “Need to get out of here?”

She does. Not for the reasons he’s implying.

But that sounds good, too.

* * *

It impresses her, how Sylvain manages to wave cheery greetings at everyone he even _thinks_ he might know as they pass by in the palace halls. One hand waving, the other tucked in hers, thumb stroking her palm in rather distracting patterns. For all his flirtatious antics, Sylvain knows how to be a noble.

It’s not a bad thing at all to have a—former—philanderer for a husband. It means they receive fewer judgmental stares for brazen displays of affection, which, for all Mercedes tolerates up to a certain point, she still must set boundaries _somewhere_. The _somewhere_ usually ends at her waist. The stares they get are aimed more at her and her self-control, an unusual sight, she supposes, than Sylvain’s touches. She’s relieved when they make it to their guest rooms, close the door, close the curtains, and—

It’s also not a bad thing at all that he knows how to kiss her like his life depends on it each and every time. Little things, like a grin, his fingers dancing up her sides before he tugs her close, against her mouth: “You were pretty excited to have me to yourself, huh?” Teasing her answer from her voice with little sips and nibbles on her lips.

Mercedes doesn’t give him a simple answer because she doesn’t have one. So she relaxes into the kiss.

He always knows what to _do_ and Sylvain has never once made her feel lesser for it. On the contrary—the way he jumps at her every touch, the way he thinks she doesn’t see his skin prickle when she smiles at him in a certain way…

Oh, but it feels good.

“We have to be quiet this time,” Mercedes tells him between kisses, between the laces of his shirt loosening. He laughs and presses their foreheads together.

“More of a challenge to you.”

“It’s…it’s _rude_ ,” she tries to insist, aware of the laughter in her voice, “the other guests— _darling_ —”

A flick of his nails on her nipple. He’s worked her bodice open while she was chastising him, and he looks far too smug. “Oh, wow. That wasn’t very quiet of you; it was rather ‘ _rude_ ,’ actually—”

Mercedes pushes him off her, he staggers back, and she takes advantage of his unbalance to wrestle him to the window seat.

This wasn’t exactly what Mercedes had in mind when she’d wanted to extricate the two of them from their friends and their friends’— _child_. Mercedes knows Annie is pregnant and doesn’t know if Felix does, or if Felix has told Sylvain. She does know Sylvain gets relaxed and boyish around them, which is good until serious matters come up and he stays frozen in a childhood he feels like he still needs to give them. They have things they need to talk about, Mercedes and her husband. Things they both need to talk about _together_ , because what scares him about their future isn’t always the same about what scares her. Something vaguely befitting such a monumental task had crossed her mind instead of…of…

Well. Pinning him to the cushions while the afternoon sun streams through the window isn’t such a bad compromise for it.

“Oh, you’re really wild now,” Sylvain drawls, trailing a slow, slick line up her center beneath her skirt. The skirt she is frantically trying to unhook. The skirt he is not helping her with. “I’ve really ruined you for anything proper and _decent_.”

“Whatever do you mean?” she huffs. She scrapes her nails down his bare chest and is rewarded by the way he shudders, hisses, closes his eyes. But that mean smile still quirks his bruised lips.

" _These_ curtains are open, sweetness."

Mercedes jerks up, as if she can't feel the warmth of the light caressing her cheeks through even the thick glass. Sylvain, beneath her, laughs, but it breaks off into a ragged moan when her nails sink deep into his chest.

"You were so _eager_."

She's breathing hard, fingers trembling, heart racing. It's true. She was. She _is_. She was and _is_ ready to continue, to...

Fingers around her fingers. Calm. Steady. "Hey," Sylvain says with a gentler smile. "Let's draw them, okay? We can light some candles. Or does a fire sound better?"

His hair sticks up every which way. Her doing. Mercedes can't help but take pride in the sight. And his shirt has been tossed carelessly to the floor, although she can't remember whose doing _that_ was. Sylvain's bruised lips and neck and collarbone make the careful, soft expression on his face almost ridiculous.

It _is_ ridiculous. Mercedes laughs. She squeezes his hand, glances out the window; there's no one there. No one's peering at them from the palace window across from theirs.

She bends down to kiss him. Slow. Lazy. _Heated_. She swipes her tongue across the tips of his incisors, and his groan shakes her body. "We should be fast, then."

It does happen quickly. He lifts up her skirt to get a better look at _her_ , at her body. It makes it hard to unfasten his pants, but somehow they manage. Laughing, breathless, kissing, skin on skin—

They stop.

"Are we..."

Sylvain’s breath comes fast and heavy. His eyes burn in the sunlight, taking her in with a complicated expression clear on his face. Mercedes wishes she could read it. But his hands don’t shake as he caresses her thighs, up, down, between, up…

"I want to."

And he's _in_ her. Just him. And she can tell there's some part of him that's not _quite_ present. But he gasps and laughs and makes love to her like her body's the only one he ever wants to touch, not even his own, and Mercedes knows it's true.

"Oh, shit," Sylvain says when they're both panting and sweating on the cushions, sated. He'd pulled out at the last minute— _habit_ , he'd said when they'd caught their breath enough to speak. But his release dribbles down her hip and has pooled in the tufted grooves of the window seat cushion. He groans and covers his face. A hint of embarrassed red creeps up his neck. “Four _fucking_ Saints, I hope the servants plan on cleaning these tomorrow.”

Sylvain’s pride is shamed by _that_.

Mercedes, ridiculously overjoyed, like the rambunctious teenager she never was, laughs and laughs and laughs until she wheezes and Sylvain asks if she's feeling okay after all that.

* * *

All the Lords of the Kingdom have shown up to offer their blessings and support for the Crown Prince's birth. Mercedes is, of course, ecstatic to see old friends. It's been far too long since she could have a conversation with sweet Marianne, who's so confident now she almost seems taller. Where Marianne goes, the newly-risen Lord Ashe of Gaspard and General Dedue follow. It's an excuse to spend time with the three of them and bake horse treats. Mercedes finds it tricky, as she can't taste-test. But Ashe assures her it's easier than it seems.

Ashe, however, has always been confident in his cooking skills, for better or for worse. Mercedes won't admit she doesn't trust his assurance in its simplicity.

"You seem well," Mercedes tells Marianne after a certain number of mix-ups with the spices that have Dedue close to laughter and Ashe close to tears. If _he’s_ having trouble, it seems safer if the two women stay away.

Marianne's cheeks turn pink with pleasure.

"My adoptive father is grooming me to become Margravine," she explains, as if it's not her own doing. "I think I enjoy the studies. I'm not as skilled an...an orator, however." Her voice drops, as if she's worried someone will overhear and remind her of this fact.

Mercedes understands that concern. Plenty of the nobility have offered her such commentary without solicitation.

"You're very brave," Mercedes says instead. Marianne's eyebrows shoot up.

"Brave? Me?"

"Last we saw each other, I don't believe you had begun your studies. Please correct me if I've misremembered; you know how forgetful I can be sometimes."

"Oh, no." Marianne quickly dismisses Mercedes's embarrassment. "You're right, I hadn't, although my adoptive father was...insistent I go to that ball."

Mercedes nods. "And you're already here, mingling among the nobility, all saying rather...unkind things about so many of their own friends."

Marianne raises an eyebrow. That's not an expression Mercedes has _ever_ seen on her. "Is your own family a part of such circles?"

She smiles. "Of course."

Ashe swears something filthy and lower-class, and both women jump. Something is smoking in the pan, and Dedue's on it with a pail of water almost before Mercedes can see the fire. The hiss shudders throughout the kitchen.

"Sorry, I'm sorry!" Ashe apologizes. Dedue pats his shoulder in a way that is probably supposed to comfort but instead succeeds in making Ashe sink into the kitchen tiles.

"It is no trouble."

Marianne looks...happy. A word Mercedes hasn't ever associated with the woman before.

"You look happy."

Mercedes startles at the sound of Marianne's voice. "I—pardon me?"

She's never seen Marianne smile before, either. It's an oddly familiar expression that sends equally-odd tingles through her stomach, but Mercedes can't quite place why.

"With your—with Sylvain. Do you take well to Gautier territory, too? It must be cold."

Mercedes struggles to contain a laugh. "I don't mind the cold. It's my, ah...it's my family _other_ than my husband who can be..."

She trails off, just as Marianne had when speaking of her skill as an orator. Like someone could be listening in.

That familiar, almost _sensual_ smile again. "I hope it's not a quality of being Margrave," she says, and it takes Mercedes too long to realize she's joking about herself. And not about her own husband, the heir.

It's her mother-in-law who's the most trying these days, but Marianne doesn't need to know that just yet. So she just smiles politely and nods.

A soldier in Gautier colors barges in on their cozy nook of friendship, startling Ashe and his latest pan. He manages to bite back his curse this time.

"My lady Countess," he barks. Both Marianne and Mercedes flinch. The same title, addressed by the same harsh voice. The soldier notices and lowers his volume. "I—I beg your pardon. It's the Margrave, you see. Your presence is required at...at once."

"Oh." She blinks. " _Oh_. I see. I'll attend him shortly."

She grabs her cloak and fastens it with the pin, the one in the shape of the Crest of Gautier she has to wear at court. "Best of luck to you," she tells Marianne with a strained smile and wave in Ashe's direction.

As she follows the soldier out of the kitchen, through the barracks, and up the stairs to the guest room, it strikes Mercedes like a bolt of lightning.

Marianne's smile is a copy of Sylvain’s best.


	3. Ethereal Moon, 1187

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stuff about periods and period pain in this chapter. Just a heads-up.

The following weeks weigh heavily on everyone. Even her. Even Sylvain.

 _Especially_ Sylvain.

The Margrave’s skin grows grayer and grayer almost with each hour that passes. Travel back from Fhirdiad, their trip cut short, had been a much longer affair and much more arduous than normal. Frequent stops, frequent emergencies, and frequent delays the snowier the roads became meant not only had they missed the entire week of festivities celebrating Prince Armel's birth, but their friends had all returned to their respective territories by the time they finally arrived home in the icy new moon.

Each day, Sylvain can be found half the time in the military section of the library with his father's advisors and the other half in the barracks with his father's commanders. He'll have to select his own soon enough, but in the meanwhile, Mercedes always knows if she must fetch him, even if she must interrupt, she'll be sure to find her frazzled husband in one of those two locations.

Each night, however, Sylvain stays with her. And their time is equally split, too.

Some nights, they talk. It's not too heavy: idle conversation. He asks about her day, her plans, her dream last night, their friends. Sylvain's hardly had time to write, much less read the letters they've received. Mercedes still hasn't told him about Annie and Felix's baby and is waiting on a reply from her best friend, to know if Felix has written the news.

Some nights, they come together with desperation.

Sylvain holds her close like she'll vanish if he lets go, if he slides out, if he keeps her too much at arm's length. Their hands slip over sweat-drenched skin, tasting each other's frantic gasps and moans. It's intense, it's _beautiful_ , the kind of lovemaking Mercedes has always wanted with him but never knew how to ask for—except sometimes they need to stop, he needs to calm himself, or she does, because for some inexplicable reason, she panics before she, before he starts to come.

Most of the time, however, they don't. Sylvain's grieving a father not yet dead, terrified of whatever comes next. He doesn't talk about it much, and if he does, it's in the quiet moments after, when she's half asleep entangled in his arms and he's wide awake, whispering seldom-voiced anxieties into her hair.

True to Sylvain's mother's word, Sylvain's father dies before the year ends. And Sylvain becomes the next Margrave Gautier.

* * *

"He almost courted me, you know," Mercedes's mother-in-law informs her almost an exact week after the funeral.

"No, I didn't know," Mercedes says. She'd asked Lady Gautier—no, that is _her_ now, this is the Dowager Countess—her mother-in-law to tea several days ago, and the woman had declined the invitation so flatly there was hardly any tact in it.

Mercedes has less affection for her mother-in-law than she suspects even Sylvain knows and certainly less than his mother has for _her_. She can't explain why the rejection had stung, or why she's so bitter to be at _this_ teatime that _she'd_ been invited to.

Sylvain's mother laughs without humor and brings her teacup to her lips. Her hand trembles too much for a woman hardly sixty. "I said _almost_. There's no reason you would have known, love." She sips the tea in such a dainty manner Mercedes can hardly believe she's tasted it. She tries to imitate the sip and ends up slurping. Fortunately, her mother-in-law keeps talking, not chastising. "Ours was an arranged match, however. I suppose he didn't see the purpose, as our engagement was so brief. I was his second wife."

Mercedes startles, and tea splashes from her cup. A servant scurries over to wipe the saucer, as if it even matters.

"Do pay more attention, Mercedes."

"I...didn't know that, either."

"Mm, yes." The woman's eyes are sad. She sets the teacup back on the table. Pure, white cloth. Like it hasn't ever been used. Gautier laundresses are paid well and hired often. "His first wife...she'd been removed from the family."

Ice creeps up Mercedes's spine. She has no reply. The Dowager Countess doesn't seem to expect one.

"They'd thought she was _barren_. I was younger. Fresher." The woman snorts, an out of character, indelicate guffaw. "'Barren,' they’d thought. It was my husband, Goddess hold him close. Impotent, or close to it. When I became pregnant with Mi—with my first son, I had never seen him so happy."

Mercedes, still frozen, expects bitterness to twist her mother-in-law's expression, but to her revulsion, there's nothing but wistful, nostalgic pleasure.

And then her expression falls. But not how Mercedes expects. "You may imagine the late Margrave's disappointment when that child proved to lack a Crest."

Familiar territory. Awful as it is, Mercedes grasps at it. "It must have been very hard for you," she tries to say through her suddenly-clogged throat. Her mother-in-law doesn't comment but does lift a trimmed brow.

"On the contrary. He came to my bed like a man twenty years younger. Nightly, too." The sly grin on her mother-in-law's face makes her look more _personable_ than she has in the year Mercedes has lived with her. And again, her face falls. "Well. It ended shortly after Sylvain turned five. I've never been quite sure why."

 _Because he survived childhood_ , Mercedes doesn't tell the grieving widow. _Because you're mourning a husband you never had, just as your son can't help loving a family who doesn't know him, who has treated him like an object, who has treated_ you _like an object, who_ —

Who treated this sad, worn-down woman like they'd treated Mercedes's mother.

The tea settles poorly in Mercedes's stomach. Her teacup saucer clatters on the table when she extends her hand to her mother-in-law. But she recoils before the other woman even notices, because now the subject changes: "And when were your courses last, Mercedes? It would be such a comfort to me just to _know_ if…Well. You're very fortunate to have a love match, you know. I have pamphlets, should you like—passion between partners, some notable scholars have written, increases likelihood of a Crest child—"

Her stomach twists in horror once more. Mercedes lets the Dowager Countess take over the conversation for the rest of tea, waiting for her dismissal, as if she's not the lady of the House now.

* * *

Sylvain kissed her goodbye before she was properly awake. Once on her forehead, once on her nose, once on her mouth. Mercedes had been groggy, straining to meet his lips, but he'd been so quick with all three that he'd already pulled away with an apology and explanation how he had another meeting with potential advisors.

Mercedes knows he hates most of them. She hates _all_ of them, but mainly because it takes him away for the entire day.

She's never been jealous before, and she wouldn't even quite call it that. It's more nostalgia than anything. They used to be able to take impromptu walks in the chilly air, or spend whole days lounged in their parlor reading and sewing, or aimlessly wandering the market until they found some nice little food stall or restaurant to try.

It's fortunate he still finds time to join her in the soup kitchens and orphanages. Those toiling people and children's faces light up each time the handsome new Margrave graces their doorsteps. But it's not the same as their lazy days indoors and outdoors like newlyweds long after their marriage.

Mercedes had fallen back asleep with minimal grumpiness. Waking up, however, is another story, except now she's glad he's not here.

It's almost funny, really. One day after a frustrating teatime with her mother-in-law asking about missing any of her _courses_ , they arrive with a vengeance.

Mercedes curls in on herself, eyeing the servants bell by her dressing room. She wishes they had one by the bed like they do in the Gautier palace quarters. But no. Castle Gautier prioritizes leaving such menial tasks as _choosing one's outfit_ to the servants over basic convenience.

Well.

Rather unkind of her to think so. But Mercedes finds it perfectly justified, given the nausea and pain wracking her stomach and back.

Her courses have always caused such agony, and she’s still barely used to it. She'd grown up seeing her mother suffer through them, fooling her own body into sympathetic twinges of pain even as a child. So when her very first shudder of agony had gripped her at age thirteen—younger than her brother's half-siblings had—she knew right away what it had meant before she'd even inspected her drawers.

"Well," her mother had huffed a sad laugh when Mercedes had run to her in tears, "at least you have me to help you. It's hard to go through such things confused and alone."

The first time Sylvain had woken up to find her gritting her teeth and pressing her fists against her stomach, she'd _cackled_ to see him get so worked up. The sound, she's still sure, had been what really frightened him.

"Are you ill? Should I—fuck, what's—Mercedes, can you hear me?"

She'd not been able to muster enough patience to explain no, this was how it always was, _it_ being her courses. She’d grunted some sort of briefer explanation, and Sylvain's face had positively blanched. "I've, uh...I didn't know it was how _all_ of you, um, suffer. If there's anything I can..."

And instead of graciously accepting his loving offer of assistance, any assistance, your comfort, your happiness, this is so fucking scary, Mercedes...

Mercedes had interrupted him and said, "My mother told me this is how it felt to give birth. Some women are like that. I suppose I'm rather prepared."

And then she'd not felt like talking anymore, even more so as Sylvain's face managed to get whiter.

She ends up not ringing the bell for a bath. For her husband to offer a massage. For some herbal remedies. For a healer more experienced than her, because this was one focus of magic that had always made her afraid.

It had been Manuela who'd given her the advice, actually. "Well, I certainly _can_ help with the pain, at least for the day," the woman had said, slowly, uncertainly, not her usual sensual drawl. "But you'll have to keep coming back each day it lasts. That doesn't seem terribly convenient, love."

"No," Mercedes had said in a small voice, dreading even the thought of constantly climbing so many stairs to the infirmary.

"Well." And Manuela's drawl had returned. She leaned forward, breasts practically falling out of her dress, and winked. “I’m going to give you a little tip, you poor thing. Something I bet your dear mother hasn’t suggested.”

Mercedes, covered in expensive sheets and a Gautier Crest-embroidered bedspread, fumbles in her nightstand drawer for the black sand steel-engraved gift she’d asked Sylvain for that first night. She closes her eyes, slips it under the covers, under her nightgown, and follows Professor Manuela’s advice.

She’ll ring the bell for a healer later. For now, black sand steel, when struck with the right amount of magic, is known to vibrate.

* * *

“You…kept them on?”

Sylvain laughs and pours himself more brandy. Only a little, though. Neither of them have had very much, but with the days growing progressively colder and snowier, and the nights growing longer and darker, the warmth of alcohol is always welcome.

And tonight’s rather celebratory. The Margrave has filled some of the positions of their House.

“Yeah, figured that’d surprise you.”

Mercedes thanks him when he shakes the bottle at her with a quirked brow. He obediently pours her more. “I thought,” she says carefully, “you and his son didn’t, ah, see eye to—”

“He does less time looking at treasury reports and more looking at your ass—ets,” his cheeks _color_ and Mercedes wants to laugh. Sylvain sips from his glass and avoids looking at her. Or her _assets_.

It had seemed like a slip-up. Does he talk about her to his friends?

About _them_? The… _assets_ —

“Listen, the treasurer’s getting on in years, and the two of ‘em know Gautier finances better than anyone,” he explains. “When he…dies, it’s not like I’ll have to go through this whole stupid process all over again, find someone trustworthy to learn the system they’ve set up, read our records…”

Mercedes has to admit, it makes sense. But… “Well, I do think it’s very good of you to set your differences aside for the good of y—our territory.” She pats his knee affectionately, but to her surprise, Sylvain’s got a curious little twinkle in his eyes.

It’s not a very kind-looking one, but he does look…happy. So that’s something.

“That’s a wonderful smile you’re wearing.”

It turns into a smirk. “Oh, you’re the only one who gets to see it, honey.” The drawl in Sylvain’s voice makes her blush. And she has no idea why. “Would you be mad if I said we haven’t set _anything_ between us aside? Well, maybe some more gold…”

Mercedes blinks. “I’m…not sure I follow.”

Sylvain pats her knee, too, but it’s slower, a little more sensual than soothing. “Didn’t you _just_ say,” he purrs, like all this talk of finance and prosperity and _assets_ is some kind of foreplay, “how it’s _so very good of me_ to value their work above my feelings? So _selfless_?”

The hand wanders higher. Her breath hitches. That smirk grows, and the hand’s gone. With a shiver and too-loud sigh, Mercedes leans back in her chair, unaware she’d been seeking his touch so openly.

“They’ll do a good job,” Sylvain says into his brandy glass, looking much too pleased with himself. “I raised their pay as ‘thanks for taking such good care of _my_ lands for _so long_.’ And I wasn’t even subtle about being, uh, a jerk. Didn’t even try being friendly. If honesty and loyalty from their new lord still manages to get them better pay…”

She gets it now. “Then you expect them to be honest and loyal in exchange. In the hopes of keeping your favor.”

“The whims of the nobility are ever-changing,” Sylvain sighs dreamily.

“Oh, dear,” Mercedes giggles. “Is that your usual tactic? Are we to expect a sudden influx of donations from some of your Officers Academy, ah, companions?” She finally raises her glass to her lips.

They always have nice brandy. Sweet enough for her tastes, but not cloying enough for anyone else. But it sours on her tongue when she sees the strange glint in Sylvain’s eyes.

“I wasn’t really known for loyalty or honesty back then,” he says. “Didn’t have much need for worthy company.” His voice is light. Easy.

This is an _easy_ lie for him to tell her.

Mercedes has gone too far. And there’s not an _easy_ or _light_ way to apologize or explain she knows he’s lying, that he needed it then and now.

Sylvain brightens, so charming and fake like plaster jewels Mercedes almost wants to believe him. “So those were _my_ sinister doings of the day,” he chirps. He drains his glass but stoppers the bottle after. “What new evils has the Lady Gautier wrought upon Fódlan today?”

* * *

Mercedes hasn’t woken from a nightmare in a long time. Sylvain has them more frequently than she does, especially lately. But when she miscounts, misremembers, thinks her courses have ended and she doesn’t need to ring for a healer in the morning only to have them seize her with pain late that evening…

By the time the agony subsides, and the medic rushes out of their rooms before bed, Mercedes knows it will be a harder night.

They’re used to it by now. Not only the healers; Mercedes does, and Sylvain does, too.

It’s still startling.

“I got you, I got you, I got you.”

Mercedes stops trying to struggle out of Sylvain’s embrace and relaxes. When he feels her come back to herself, his tight grip eases, too. “It’s okay, I got you. It’s okay, sweetheart.”

They sink back to the mattress. Mercedes curls up against his side, and he holds her close. Not on his stomach, as usual. On the good nights, the ones where she _doesn’t_ forget.

Sylvain doesn’t ask if she wants to talk about it, and she’s always glad for it. She wonders if it’s ever occurred to him she might _want_ to, because he never wants to talk about his.

Mercedes never wants to talk about hers, either.

 _She wants him to love her because she loves him so, so, so, so much but what about Emile what about her son she doesn’t have a son what about their_ son _her mother in pain her stepfather is furious, she hates her husband so, so, so, so, so much and all he wants is more and a_ son _and_ can’t you do that much, isn’t that what I married you for, _I love you so, so, so, so much_

Sylvain has enough to worry about. He doesn’t need to know this about her. He doesn’t need to comfort her when he’s the one who’s able to heal. They have other pains they can share together.

But Mercedes can let him hold her, soothe her after the dreams. She can fall back to softer dreams if he holds her, even if she doesn’t tell him anything.


	4. Guardian Moon, 1188

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo, later update then usual, but we're back on track! Thank you for your continued love, wow, and welcome to the new friends-slash-readers!!
> 
> Come hang out with me on twitter! I'm [@NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites)!

It never ends.

The interviews, the firings, the hirings, the recruiting, the haggling, the selling, the planning...Mercedes confesses herself shocked and rather disgusted by how disorganized the whole process of getting a new Margrave settled seems to go. She'd grown up in the Empire, where the value of Crests was worth living bodies, made for using and breaking and misusing until there was nothing left. From her time in Faerghus as well as her time in Gautier territory, Mercedes had seen enough similarities between the Kingdom and the Empire to consider herself well-versed on the topic.

But no. Faerghus didn't value bodies; it valued the _potential_ of bodies. And that _potential_ wasn't even limited to heirs and Crests.

The potential for a larger army, for more ways to cut down foes from up north. Armies were bodies.

The potential for more status in court, for ways to exert one's House's influence most efficiently and effectively even while the head of the House stayed home. Courtiers were bodies.

The potential for children. More children. And more children. It hadn't taken Mercedes long to learn the orphanages' influx of babies after the war was no longer from parents killed in the line of duty, but from parents of various social statuses despairing over their infants ruining their chances at a better life by daring to be born Crestless. Bodies with wasted potential.

Mercedes tries to help Sylvain when she can. But this type of knowledge is so far beyond her experiences and upbringing, she feels she hinders more than helps when she attends the meetings.

"It'll die down soon," Sylvain sighs one night after a particularly grueling day. They're lying on the rug before the fireplace together, a haphazard tangle of limbs. Neither of them has the energy to do anything further, but it's nice to feel his skin, the silky slide of his dressing robe.

"How do you know?"

He sighs again, and while Mercedes knows she needed to ask, her wilting spirits wish she hadn't. "I really don't. My father was already the Margrave when I was born."

* * *

A letter from Annie arrives one dreary winter morning, and just like that, the day becomes that much better. Sylvain's out showing the newest guard captain around her district—the industrial district—so Mercedes gets to tear into the letter on her own, at her own pace. There are two letters for Sylvain that _aren't_ dull business missives: one from Felix, and one from Caspar. They're waiting for him on his desk for whenever he returns.

Mercedes grabs the letter opener and almost cuts herself with it when she rips it through the seal. Annie's familiar looping writing falls out on three fun-filled pages. Mercedes settles onto their couch and pops tiny balls of fried dough in her mouth while she reads.

It is, indeed, a fun letter. Annie is _happy_. She wants to come visit in spring; when would be good for the happy Gautier duo? Oh, she's so sorry about the Margrave, by the way. She knows he and Mercie didn't really get along, but still, oh, no, that probably wasn't kind, but she can't find her blotter. Apologize to Sylvain for her, and maybe, oh, right, give him her condolences.

Mercedes has polished off almost the entire plate of treats when she gets to the last paragraph of the last page.

No, Annie hasn't told Sylvain she's pregnant. She figures Felix has told him. She'll ask him, but she has to send the post off right this minute before the courier leaves. Felix will probably write Sylvain himself if he hasn't. Don't worry, Mercie. She knows it's a sore subject, but it'd be kind of weird if Annie was the one to tell Sylvain, and not his closest friend. It wouldn't be nice to either of them. Annie loves her and begs her to write back soon with details of the best time for a springtime trip.

And Mercedes has finished reading.

She stares at Annie's cheerful updates and complaints about her swollen feet with mixed, confusing emotion. She can't help but wish she was there for her best friend at such an exciting time in her life. Fraldarius territory isn't far at all, but they've just been so _busy_ with Sylvain's new title that they've hardly had a chance to communicate at all—

Mercedes sucks in a sharp breath, rereading Annie's last paragraph. Unbidden, her eyes trail to Sylvain's desk. Felix's letter rests on top of the business correspondence. It had arrived the same day as Annie's.

* * *

The Dowager Countess becomes scarcer and scarcer in the dark winter days. Would she like to join them for supper? No, she’ll take it in her room. Would she care to go for a turn about the castle? No, she is tired. Would she join Mercedes on a visit to the orphanage? No, that is unbecoming for the Dowager Countess to be seen in such an establishment so soon after her husband’s death.

This last curt rejection is the only sign of the woman’s lingering grief. Mercedes can see where Sylvain got his habit of refusing to confront his inner demons, but it shames her to admit at least Sylvain _tries_ to hide it.

“You don’t need to strain yourself inviting her,” Sylvain rolls his eyes over dinner, heedless of the servant pouring him a new cup of wine. “It’s not like she’s gone out of _her_ way to comfort you or anything.”

The servant’s face remains impassive. Professional. Mercedes still eyes the rest of the staff nervously. Servants gossip. People talk. Sylvain has, perhaps, relaxed too easily to his return to noble life. Or perhaps she’s overthinking their public conversations now that it’s just the two of them.

“She seems rather lonely,” Mercedes says carefully anyway. Sylvain gets quiet, thoughtful, maybe. They eat in silence for several minutes before he speaks up.

“I don’t think either of us can fix that for her,” he says. There’s an undercurrent to the words, something cautious that Mercedes can’t read. “If she needs to spend time alone, it’d be the…nicer thing to let her have that, right?”

He’d used words Mercedes hadn’t. But if he’s so cautious about _this_ subject whereas he wasn’t about his mother’s treatment of his wife…”Right,” she says brightly, and Sylvain’s shoulders relax. “You make a fine point.”

She wants to ask him what he means later, alone in their sitting room. She hopes he’ll be the one to bring it up first, worries he won’t, fears he thinks she’s read through the subtle political maneuvers of his words when she hasn’t been brought up to do so.

“Let’s play a game tonight,” he says instead, kicking off his shoes with enough exuberance he looks like a little boy.

“A game? What kind of game?”

“Any game.” Barefoot and cheerful, Sylvain bounces over to the desk—no, the chest next to the desk. The pile of unopened personal letters has grown. Mercedes feels nauseated just looking at them. “What’re you in the mood for?”

“Let’s…play chess.” Mercedes does not like chess, but Sylvain’s own mood baffles her.

Sylvain pokes his head out of the chest and frowns. “You don’t like chess.”

“Well, I might, if it’s with you.” Her voice doesn’t convince herself, so it’s no wonder Sylvain’s frown deepens.

“We don’t have to,” he says, closing the lid. Embarrassment never looks good on him; his face goes pale, his eyes can’t settle, his smile fails. “Didn’t wanna, uh, didn’t mean to push—”

“I just don’t know any other games, really,” Mercedes says, and to her horror, she keeps talking. “I don’t know of anything like this. What I’m supposed to play, what the—the Lady Margrave is supposed to play.”

Sylvain opens his mouth to cut her off, but the words spill from her mouth just as tears begin to spill down her cheeks. “I don’t know how to talk to anyone, or how to talk to you when we’re not—alone, or how to talk to my mother-in-law. Not about anything, not about—not about things _you_ can’t, I can’t—”

Mortifying. This is mortifying. Not the tears, not the…way Sylvain has rushed over to gather her in his arms, folding her against his chest. This lack of self-control and discipline embarrasses her in a way that surely looks worse on her than it did on him.

Sylvain, at least, has things he probably _should_ be ashamed of. He won’t believe her if she tries to convince him the same is true of her, however slight in comparison.

She cries into his shirt, muffling her sobs against the tear-soaked fabric while he holds her. No hushes, no verbal assurances. Just his hands stroking her hair, chin on her head, squeezing her close.

“I’m so sorry,” she hiccups, but even to her own ears she knows it’s incomprehensible.

“I’m so sorry,” Sylvain murmurs. She tries to lift her head to look at him, but he’s speaking into her hair and she’s too afraid to try pulling away. “I really didn’t prepare you for any of this, huh?”

It’s not like anyone was prepared for Sylvain’s father to die, Mercedes wants to argue. And while he’s right in that they should have prepared for this life _together_ instead of going on lazy walks or rising from bed too late and too giggly or spending heated moments by the hearth learning each other’s bodies…

They had their own problems to face. To prepare for them. To work through them. Life didn’t wait for that, and neither did death.

And it wasn’t like Mercedes had wanted to face those problems before they had reason to discuss life among the nobility together.

She’d been too afraid of the concept of _together_ to even begin.

Life and death didn’t wait during war, either.

“It’s not your fault,” she manages instead, forcing sound from her throat. Sylvain chuckles and Mercedes hates the disbelieving pain in his laugh.

“Yeah. I know.”

* * *

Mercedes decides that morning the Dowager Countess can very well make her own decisions to rejoin society; she refuses to be hurt any further by a woman she holds little affection for. Sylvain applauds her for her resolute decision, although she’s more courteous in the way she phrases it. His relationship with his mother is a complicated one, perhaps more so than with his father, and it’s not Mercedes’s place to criticize him for loving someone, anyone. Even if that _someone_ had brought him into existence less as a person and more as a pawn on a chessboard.

At the same time, she realizes, heading back to their room that afternoon from the soup kitchen, her mother-in-law had never been in the game in the first place. Maybe, Mercedes decides instead, tugging off her gloves as she opens the door, she should organize a performance. Invite a musical troupe of some sort, let the Dowager Countess be informed, because the Goddess knows Mercedes will _never_ shunt the woman aside now that she is no longer relevant in the House—

Sylvain stands in the center of the parlor with an open letter in his hand.

Mercedes’s greeting dies in her throat. Sylvain’s face reveals nothing, but the broken Fraldarius seal on the envelope by his feet says everything.

“Hey,” Sylvain greets her first. He sets the letter on the desk and ignores the fallen envelope. His smile’s aimed behind her, gaze settling not quite on her face. “Felix—our friends are having a baby. Too.”

Mercedes nods. Sylvain’s gaze drops, to where her fingers wring her gloves tightly together. “Did you know?” he asks casually. Quietly.

She nods again. They both look at her gloves.

“Thanks for…waiting.”

Mercedes jerks her head up, eyes wide with panic. Waiting? Waiting for what? Waiting to tell him? Waiting to…to ask, to _talk_ about it, to talk about them—

The smile quirking Sylvain’s lips isn’t grand in size, but it looks genuine. “He’s my best friend too, you know? I’m glad I could…hear the news from him. Although,” he snorts, running his fingers through his hair, “he could’ve told me when we saw him in Fhirdiad, you know? This letter’s old enough. He _had_ to know back then!”

It is indeed a bit odd, now that Mercedes thinks about it. But Annie hadn’t said anything to make it _seem_ intentional…

“Guess I gotta stop calling him a cute baby brother, huh?” Sylvain shakes his head, like it’s _his_ life changing so drastically. “Might be weird if I turn into ‘Uncle Sylvain.’”

He cracks another smile alongside the joke, and Mercedes’s forced laughter back comes convincingly enough. It’s made easier by her relief that he’s taking the news so…positively.

‘Weird’ indeed.

He’ll never be an uncle, after all.

* * *

“The Margrave is overseeing cavalry training today, my lady,” the guard tells her when she asks Sylvain’s whereabouts.

“But it’s so cold today.”

The guard shrugs, as if she’s not speaking to the lady of the House. Mercedes isn’t sure if the familiarity should offend or reassure her. “It can get cold in Sreng, too. I heard the two of you fought at Ailell during the war. I’m sure I’d miss Sreng winters if I had to step foot even near that place!”

The guard’s awe, tinged with good humor, tempers Mercedes’s bad mood. She woke up out of sorts and can find no cause for it save the memory of last night’s musical performance. Her mother-in-law had refused to show up, and while Mercedes should have predicted it, and she _hadn’t_ gone to all the trouble for the woman’s sake alone…

It still irritated her. Apparently, the performers were too _pedestrian_ for the Dowager Countess’s sake, a maid had privately confided in her with a poorly-concealed eyeroll.

If her mother-in-law had decided her own presence was of use to House Gautier no longer, well, that was a battle Mercedes couldn’t hope to win. Sylvain was right. And he was _also_ right in that his own Crest was to blame.

The woman had foisted more _pamphlets_ on her before the performance along with a polite inquiry for her…health.

A problem for another day. For now…

“Yes, the heat was rather unbearable,” Mercedes tells the guard. “I suppose it’s called the Valley of Torment for a reason, regardless of its sacred past.”

The guard laughs. “Well, the Goddess can torment me all she likes, but I’m never going to investigate that _sacred past_ if it means dealing with all that! Anyway, Margrave’s outside. You can watch from the northern watchtower if it’s too cold even for _you_ , my lady.”

Mercedes thanks her and heads for the northern side of the castle. She only just manages not to stop in her tracks when the guard’s last words finally process. The blush, however, accompanies her the rest of the hurried walk.

_Servants do like to gossip._

* * *

Goddess save and keep her, but Sylvain is breathtaking on the battlefield.

Mercedes bundles herself deeper into her cloak, hands pressed tight into her armpits. It’s bitterly cold, even for Gautier, but she refuses to go back inside. When she’s not right there next to him, when there’s no imminent threat besides foolhardy recruits…

Sylvain in combat is a sight to behold.

She knows he was only supposed to _oversee_ training, not engage in it. But she’s so, so very glad she came in time to see him realize the single captain was struggling to handle so many recruits and had joined in.

He’s wearing warm training gear. Padded, only lightly armored. His weapon is a standard training lance, no Relic spitting holy fire at screeching demons. His horse is his favorite beloved black mare, no warhorse exchanged from the stables when the previous beast had tired.

And he’s _smiling_.

Mercedes smiles, too, even through her cold lips. She knows he hates how out-of-practice he feels at all times. Sreng hasn’t made any real advances since the war ended, only hesitant little forays into meager territory. Testing the waters, so to speak. Gautier forces have easily repelled them, but that, Sylvain always says, is no excuse for slacking, which is rich coming from _him_ , he knows, but not everyone is him, and—

Sylvain roars a battle cry, and her face practically bursts into flame.

He rears— _rears_ , muscled thighs gripping the saddle, strong arms raised tight and deadly, there’s a gleeful fire in his snarl Mercedes can see even from this distance—and thunders down a clear line of soldiers, knocking them off their own saddles one by one.

The way his shoulders flex beneath his training attire when he parries a sword from one hopeful recruit and shoves the woman off almost in the same motion.

The way his back arches as he leans back, back, back into the saddle to dodge a luckier stab of a lance.

The way the sweat sticks to his neck when he dismounts at the end of the training set, she can tell even from up here because she _knows_ what his hair looks like all messy with battle, all messy with _sex_ , the way he always grins at her through it, through the locks of slick hair whether with blood she needs to clean or, or, or just exertion from anything, really, but…

The way his eyes light up when he catches sight of her watching.

Mercedes hurries down against her better judgment, feeling her thighs slick against each other with each step down the stairs.

“Hey, gorgeous,” Sylvain says, pressing a gentle, almost-chaste kiss on the back of her wrist. “Like what you saw up there?”

Mercedes can’t speak. This _lust_ …

Oh, but by Seiros is he handsome like this.

And she is so very aware of how many soldiers are milling about, finishing their stretches.

And Sylvain, holding her palm, her _wrist_ , her fluttering pulse…

“Speechless, huh?” He winks, strokes his thumb along her skin, _feeling_ her heart race. “I get it. I _am_ pretty impressive.”

When she doesn’t rise to the bait, only nods, what is _wrong_ with her, she’s seen him fight before, which is different from training, yes…Sylvain’s eyes darken in understanding.

“You look frozen solid,” he says, and although she doesn’t think he’s lowered his voice, the velvety, deep sound caresses her entire body like a whisper of a touch on her skin. His kiss comes as an unsatisfying kiss that has her leaning into him when he releases her. “Lips cold as ice, too. Better go warm you up somewhere, huh, sweetheart?”

It’s a terrible line.

“Yes,” Mercedes rasps. “That sounds…lovely.”

“Lovely, huh?” Heedless of the probably-repulsed soldiers filing past, Sylvain rakes his nails along that cruel, sensitive spot on her neck. While she stifles a moan, he presses his lips to her cheek and murmurs. “I think _you’re_ lovely. Let me prove it with my mouth between your legs. I wanna taste just how _lovely_ you really are.”

She can’t believe it had actually worked.


	5. Pegasus Moon - Lone Moon, 1188

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick warning this chapter--some themes of sexual trauma here! Nothing explicit, but refers to coercion and lack of autonomy. I thought it was worth a heads-up, but it's not extreme.
> 
> Thank you for stickin' by me and being so god damned excited all the time to see me! Make my day and blab at me on twitter and my curious cat stuff. I really, really can't get enough of hearing from you. I'm still [@NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites), as usual.

At least they possess enough decorum not to get handsy on the way back to their rooms. They _hold hands_ , yes, but other than the far-too-smug grin on Sylvain’s face and the far-too-stiff angle of Mercedes’s posture, they return home with as much sense and politeness as the staff expects of the Margrave and Margravine.

They don’t expect much. Servants become scarcer and scarcer the closer they get.

Mercedes is quite warm by the time their bedroom door shuts behind them, but she offers no resistance when Sylvain pulls her close with a whispered promise to _get her good and hot_. She peppers kisses along his neck and jaw, never quite reaching his lips, because he keeps dodging her mouth to mirror the same kisses on her own skin. Clothing falls piece by constricting piece to the cold wooden floor.

“You know what I think I need?” Sylvain whispers when he finally lets her get close enough to his mouth. Mercedes pauses, heart hammering.

“What?”

Her voice is raw, ragged, and wanting.

Sylvain slips out of her arms before she can cry her protests and scurries to the washroom with a cheery salute. “A bath. Really worked up a sweat out there.”

He vanishes behind a closed washroom door. Mercedes stands cold, teased, and affronted in the center of the bedroom while the merry sounds of splashing mock her from beyond.

She collapses on the bed with a huff when she hears him _singing_.

Excitement from vigorous training must be coursing through him right now. _Sylvain_ can afford to be patient and a _tease_. But Mercedes has spent the last hour watching that training, and she is rather…pent-up and in dire need of excitement, herself. While Sylvain enjoys a noisy, bubbly bath locked away from her, Mercedes closes her eyes and presses idle circles on herself between her thighs.

She’s had little cause for complaint lately where _this_ aspect of their marriage is concerned. Maybe she’s grown greedy. Spoiled. Soft.

But this does not change the fact Sylvain has taken far too much delight in _leaving_ her like this.

Her hips have just begun to ride out a rhythm on her fingers when Sylvain emerges, dripping wet and completely bare, and knocks her hands aside. “I thought you wanted _me_ to warm you up,” he chastises her, stroking his own two fingers up, down, up her agonizingly-slick center.

“Oh, don’t tease,” Mercedes snaps without much bite. Sylvain erases all memory of her objections in seconds, however; he crawls between her thighs, effortlessly tosses her legs over his shoulders, and puts his mouth to sweeter purposes.

His torture is all _dip_ and _lick_ and hard circles of his tongue, fingers straying too close but not close enough. She’s close to shaking when he _stops_ —Mercedes almost snarls—and grins _just_ above her, “Fuck, you taste delicious.” His shiny lips quirk in a way Mercedes knows she’ll have no patience for, and he corrects himself: “No, sorry— _lovely_. You taste lo—”

He gets a frantic nudge of her heels on his shoulders for his troubles. “Sylvain,” she whines, more desperate plea than a true scold.

Sylvain is not nearly as put-out. No, he presses a surprisingly gentle kiss on her inner thigh, rests his cheek on the just-kissed skin, and asks, “So. You were watching me, huh?”

This would be almost unbearable did he not look so… _happy_. Affectionate. Shy, even, if Sylvain were capable of such a thing.

Sweet Goddess, but who would she be not to love him?

“For most of it, yes,” Mercedes admits with a husky voice, sitting up enough to smooth stray wet bangs from his face. “When you—you were really…” She stops herself. He doesn’t like to be called— “I wanted to be down there with you.” True. “To be closer.” True in a different, cozier way. “To…to touch— _ah_!”

With only one lash of his tongue, Sylvain’s gentle expression has been replaced by a self-satisfied, delighted smirk. “Can’t deny my lady,” he purrs, breath hot _on_ her. “Touch me all you like.”

When he starts up again, merciless this time, she doesn’t even get the chance save clutching blindly at his shoulders. Her ears ring when she comes, head foggy with how fast her pulse is pounding. Distantly, Mercedes feels Sylvain nestle behind her boneless body. He mouths the nape of her neck, and the part of herself that is always so _aware_ of him gives her enough energy again to shiver.

“Can I go in?” His voice in her ear earns him another shiver.

They’ve done this before. Enough times now that it’s no longer delicious in its exciting novelty, but delightful in the mere sensation of skin on skin.

“Yes.”

Sylvain nuzzles her, lips just brushing the shell of her ear. He slides himself between her legs, against her, his chest to her back, just brushing, just making that part of her want to shiver over, and over, and over—“Sylvain, _please_.”

“Impatient,” he chuckles. “But we’ve got _all day_ now.”

Sylvain’s right. Maybe she _should_ savor this. Mercedes has, after all, already come once by his hand and mouth and fingers. They have the rest of the afternoon and maybe even the night to play and touch and tease—

Mercedes spins around in his arms and kisses him, cutting off his surprised moan with her tongue. He presses back, lazy, almost submissive in the way he lets her flick her tongue against his. Finally, he tilts his hips, she throws one leg over his thigh, and they sigh into each other’s mouths when they come together.

Soon, she knows he’s going to come because she’s close. “Are you—” she sort of asks, breaking off into a moan like a shiver made vocal.

“I don’t want to—” Sylvain hits some _spot_ that makes her gasp, then pauses, _inside_ , for a borderline painful moment. “pull out, can—Mercedes—”

“Sure,” Mercedes gasps. Her own pleasure’s been startled, unbalanced, but Sylvain starts up again with a curse that almost sounds like relief; it’s not long before she feels that heat coiling tight again. His fingers grip her hip hard enough there might be bruises, but Mercedes still wants to be closer, closer, arms tight around his back, her face buried in his chest panting cries against his collarbones.

“I love you.”

* * *

Later, they talk. The conversation happens one lunch in their parlor, far from bed and too close to important meetings to flirt or kiss or seduce. They agree it won’t be an ‘every time’ thing.

On the one hand: “What a mess!” Mercedes laughs, shaking her head. “I suppose I thought it more logical to, well,” she makes some gesture that makes Sylvain choke on his wine. “Don’t laugh! Just that it would, ah, stay inside, so to speak.” Sylvain hums non-committedly, and she has the feeling they’re both imagining the… _pamphlets_ and _positions_ his mother recommended to them both. Continues to recommend.

On the other: “I don’t think it’s fair to…” Sylvain hunches forward to rest his elbows on his knees, staring at his hands. “Making this—making a baby is like, you’re going to have a little human thing to love. And something like…like for both of us, with our—” now it’s his turn to make a vague gesture, albeit a less lewd one, “I kind of get the feeling how for us, ‘trying to conceive’ isn’t…something we want to do.” Before Mercedes can decide if she should point out he hasn’t even made a dirty joke, his eyes light up. “I mean, don’t get me wrong: it’s a _lot_ of fun.”

So predictable. She sighs and finishes her own wine.

“But you see what I mean, right? Or…no?” Anxiety colors his words, slows his speech. When Mercedes lowers her glass, Sylvain appears to be meeting her eye, but only just: his gaze settles just past her ear.

“Yes, with…the intent,” she says, just as haltingly. Hesitating too. How much of another person’s mind can anyone claim to know and have it be true?

Sylvain blows a heavy sigh and hangs his head. “I know,” he says to his knees, “we need an heir. I know that we’ve got a _responsibility_. But it’s not the Gautier _Crest_ inheriting this title. It’s…”

He breaks off and clears his throat. And again. Mercedes thinks he might be fighting tears.

“It’s a Gautier child,” she tries to complete the sentence.

The words rattle her, but in an…almost good way. Almost.

A child of House Martritz, too. In a roundabout fashion.

Sylvain eases the sudden emotion clogging her throat by nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, you…That’s _exactly_ how I feel. Mercedes,” he does look at her straight-on now, and the relief in his smile means the world, “you just _get_ it. That means…”

He leans back in his chair to stare at the ceiling and sighs again. But that smile stays. “It means the world.”

* * *

Mercedes remembers to ring the bell this time.

Almost.

The healers had been in the middle of switching shifts when she rang, so it’s a flustered trainee who comes to provide pain relief. He does well, but…

Nighttime brings inconsistent memories all the same.

She’s bodyless. Ageless. The mirror above her dresser at Garreg Mach doesn’t reflect anything, which is a relief; she can see plenty from where she’s hovering above the two of them: above Sylvain, above _her_. Mercedes doesn’t need to see this memory reflected twice.

Not that it’s not a _pleasant_ one.

It had and has started with Sylvain kissing sugar off her fingers. An invitation to tea turned sweet. This is a true memory.

“Missed a spot,” Sylvain grins around her fingers. His lips press one, two, three little kisses up her hand, up her wrist. “Oh, another—wow, good thing it’s just the two of us; can’t let you outside the bedroom! You’d scandalize the whole army like this…”

She laughs at the silly premise. She’d laughed back then, too. Those giggles had dried up as he’d trailed his lips up her arm. Heated skin grew hotter, feverishly so, just by the way he’d looked at her.

This is where she had stopped him. Where she always stops, had stopped him.

This time, she doesn’t.

“Touch me,” she says instead. Sylvain raises a brow. Mercedes moans, somewhere deep in her throat, and she can’t tell which version of her makes the sound.

“I _am_ touching you, honey.”

Honey. Always _honey_ like this. Sweet, sugary, syrupy. Delicious.

“Is this what you want from me?” Sylvain asks her, but he’s asking _her_ , not Mercedes with her honey-sweet skin and pastry-dotted lips. “Do you want to stay with me?”

“Always,” Mercedes’s voice insists.

“Good.” A kiss. “Good.” A caress. “Good.” Her skirts unravel. “You’re safe with me. You’ll stay with me.”

“Whether I like it or not?”

“Whether you like it or not,” Sylvain agrees. He bends over her. Mercedes can’t feel his kiss. “I want you in my family.”

This never happened. Mercedes knows this. It never happened to _her_ but it happened to so, so many, it happened to her _mother_. She wishes the mirror would vanish, but it stays, blank, flat, gleaming without reflection.

What always happened was this: Mercedes would firmly place Sylvain’s hand to somewhere more appropriate: a little higher, a little lower, a little more chaste. She knew it irritated him to a certain extent. Sylvain was just…he _was_ sex, and she knew even then he had no idea how to separate the act from his identity. She hadn’t known the extent and still doesn’t, but without words, they both understood it wasn’t going to fade into his mind with ease.

But he respected her. Found it enticing, in a way. He knew Mercedes wasn’t teasing, wasn’t playing coy. And, since he found it… _exciting_ for some reason, this little game of learning boundaries, enjoying what they had and making it so, so, so good…

Mercedes never had to explain.

But in the dream—which now she can identify as such, this isn’t _real_ and it doesn’t help—right now, she does.

“You want to brand me, don’t you?” Mercedes asks. His tongue traces a pattern on her bare skin. She thinks he might be grinding against her, and while she knows she’s soaking wet, dreams never let her feel much unless they’re the better kind. “You want me to feel secure.”

“I do,” Sylvain says. His lips brush her eyelids. “I know you don’t believe any of this.”

“I want to stay with you. With your family.”

Sylvain pulls back, fully clothed. Mercedes sees herself sit up. “I wish I didn’t have one,” Sylvain tells her. “I wish it was just ours.”

A gentle hand rubs soothing circles on her shoulder, and Mercedes startles awake.

“Hey, you,” real-Sylvain smiles down at her. Concern dims the expression. “Still had a rough dream?”

Mercedes sighs and burrows her face into his chest. Sylvain’s arms wrap around her, bring her closer. Automatic.

“Ouch, your nose is _cold_!”

Mercedes nuzzles him more until he laughs.

It’s not until he wakes her up from a light doze, ready to start the day, that Mercedes realizes it’s the first time he’s ever asked her about her dream.

* * *

“You know,” Mercedes tells him one morning, “you _are_ the Margrave Gautier.”

Sylvain rakes his hand through his hair and strikes a pose from his dressing room. “I sure am, sweetheart.”

Mercedes chucks a throw pillow at him. It misses terribly, and Sylvain jeers at her for it.

They had a splendid bath together this morning, which they’d needed despite having one last evening. The nighttime had…required it.

Nighttime had also required something specific, something they weren’t supposed to have on hand.

“You could legalize contraceptives, now that you have your local court—”

“Most of them, yeah.” Sylvain looks thoughtful. He buttons up Mercedes’s dress in silence. “I’d need to think how to go about it, you know? House Gautier isn’t…known for breaking tradition.”

It’s also not known for being lenient with its heirs and their Crests, but Mercedes keeps that thought to herself.

“I don’t know my new court’s stance on the matter,” he continues. “There, you’re all set.” His hand lingers on the small of her back, but he lets her go without much more than a wink.

“But can’t you just write the…the law, the decree, and…” Mercedes scrunches her eyebrows together, struggling to find words she never needed to learn.

He shrugs, and the motion makes the cloak slip from his shoulder. He hasn’t fastened it tightly enough, so Mercedes fixes it for him. “I suppose, but that’s not going to make me very popular, will it? I’d rather have something in place people _like_ , or at the very least, felt they had some say in.” His bitter laugh ruffles her hair. Now it’s her turn to pat the clasps she’s just finished neatening. “I have a ton of clout in Fhirdiad, but I’m really alone in my own House, in a way.”

She shakes her head and makes for the sitting room door. “You have me.”

* * *

They have just left the most recently-built orphanage when Sylvain pipes up, surrounded by Gautier soldiers, “Yeah, why not?”

Mercedes doesn’t even trip trying to stare and read his expression. She’s growing used to the rough, ancient stones of the castle town’s streets. “Why not what?”

“Let’s figure something out. How to talk to the local court, bring something up. Just…figure something out.” Sylvain rubs the back of his head, an oddly bashful gesture. What a funny thing to be embarrassed about—“I thought about it in Fhirdiad, you know.”

“Just this past moon?”

“Oh—no. During the ball.” His grin grows _smooth_ and _sensual_ and now Mercedes does trip. Sylvain catches her by the elbow and croons, “Before you used your _mouth_ —”

Almost as though he’s pinched her rear, Mercedes straightens enough to bump her head on Sylvain’s jaw. “Sorry, I’m sorry!”

He only chuckles, rubbing the spot. “Yeah, yeah, I get it.”

“Syl _vain_ —”

“No, but really. Let’s…talk about it sometime, shall we? Make some amazing battle plan.”

With a smile that dazzling, how can Mercedes not bounce in place when she agrees, nearly tripping again? The Gautier soldiers around them mean little when Sylvain looks at her like that, like he’s found some purpose in the darkness that’s plagued them both for so long.

* * *

It’s not a bad dream that wakes her. She’s just cold.

The Pegasus Moon is drawing to a close, but Gautier territory chills even her to the bone. Spring comes late so far north; Mercedes can’t imagine what it must be like for their soldiers on campaign in Sreng.

Sylvain, for his part, could be dead to the world for how deeply asleep he is. Smooth, regular breathing, hardly moving…he’ll probably have a crease on his cheek from his pillow in the morning. Mercedes inches closer, seeking out the heat he always just… _radiates_. And as peaceful as he is…

She just can’t help touching him.

Nothing unseemly, unwelcome, nothing…sexual, really. Mercedes just likes the feel of his skin. Hot, silky-smooth over steel like his muscled biceps. Rough hair on his arms, legs, the front of his body hidden from her by the mattress. Deceptively soft—

“May I help you?”

Sylvain’s voice, rough with sleep, startles her enough to retreat. “Sorry, I—"

“Hey, no, get back here.” Sylvain opens his arms, and she curls back into them. “What’s up?”

He’s hardly awake.

“I’m sorry, I just wanted to touch you.” Now that she says the uncomfortably-familiar words, she feels…guilty. “Is—was that okay?”

“Yeah, you don’t need to ask,” Sylvain says blithely. But as her hand recommences its cautious ministrations, Mercedes realizes the way Sylvain’s body leans into her isn’t…guiding her anywhere. It’s only responding to wherever her hand goes, never predicting its path.

Like his own body has no agency of its own. Like _Sylvain_ has no agency over it.

He’s almost back asleep now. He doesn’t even care. Hardly reacts. No smile, no hum of pleasure. Just lets her touch his skin until Mercedes feels _repulsive_ and withdraws. And he doesn’t flinch.

Sylvain, she finally understands, this unknown hour in a meaningless time of night, is accustomed to receiving such meaningless touches. Perhaps even used to it, to lacking the luxury of _caring_.

How absolutely foolish of her to forget.

And just like that, Mercedes now understands why he doesn’t like being called beautiful.

* * *

“My wife’s _beauty_ isn’t what makes us fuck, Mother!”

Mercedes nearly drops the basket of lemon dumplings outside the reception hall. She didn’t even know Sylvain was back from the barracks, she and his mother were to have tea—

“What crass language. You’re not a soldier anymore. You are Margrave and you will—”

“Right. I am the _Margrave Gautier_. And the Margrave Gautier goes to fucking war when he needs to!”

“So. Is she even pregnant?”

Mercedes has never heard a silence so loud. Should she make her presence known? Should she sweep in, like she has heard nothing, like someone will explain to her what is happening—

“I don’t know. I doubt it. And it’s none of your business.”

“Sylvain, the _Margrave_ has other responsibilities than—”

“I was the heir because of my Crest. I am Margrave because of my Crest. _I killed your son_. Because of _my_ Crest. Which he tried to kill me for, too. Remember? You remember that, Mother?” His mother does not reply. Mercedes is glad she did not interrupt. “So when Sreng razes a _Gautier_ town, the fucking Gautier Crest-bearer grabs _this_ —” a weapon with a familiar, deadly hum shakes, “—and makes the Gautier Crest worth it. Or is that not what the fucking thing is for? Because if not, shouldn’t matter if I die with no _heir_.”

“Stop swearing.”

“Then stop acting like this.” Footsteps, heavy boots. “I need to go tell—”

Mercedes does not scamper out of the way quickly enough. She bumps her basket of lemon dumplings against Sylvain’s chest when she tries to flee in the wrong direction.

“Mercedes,” Sylvain breathes. “Did you…hear all that?”

He’s holding the Lance of Ruin.

“Yes.” She swallows. The basket shakes in her grip. “I…when do you—”

“Let’s go.” Sylvain hesitates, like he wants to take her hand, but the Lance of Ruin gets in the way of whatever motion his hands wanted to make. “Our—our room.”

* * *

Sylvain goes to war the next morning.

Sreng had decided the Margrave had gotten cozy enough with his court settled, and, predictably, had also decided the Margrave had gotten _too_ cozy.

The town hadn’t been prosperous, noteworthy enough for any other territory to intervene or declare war. Fraldarius or even Riegan probably had no reason to pay attention, at least not on a formal diplomatic note. Besides, the entirety of Fódlan simply…expects House Gautier to deal with Sreng threats. House Gautier has the Lance of Ruin. House Gautier always has a Crest-bearer in its castle.

“I don’t think it will be long,” Sylvain tells her. Her hands tremble on his chest.

“I can come with. I can—”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Sylvain shakes his head, a wry, unhappy smirk on his lips. He tucks a loose strand of her hair behind her ear, so much longer than the war now. Another lifetime ago. So many deaths ago. “You’re the Margravine now. You need to hold down the fort.”

Their last night together is too desperate to enjoy its painfully brief hours.

In the morning, from the castle stairs, Mercedes watches him and their troops ride away, so far north it hurts to watch them disappear over the snowy hills.

“Come inside, love,” the Dowager Countess says too kindly. She extends her papery hand. Mercedes pointedly ignores it.

“I am the Margravine now,” she mumbles to herself. “I am—”

She promptly keels over, vomits into the closest planter. And wants to vomit again when she hears her mother-in-law’s delighted intake of breath.


	6. Lone Moon - Garland Moon, 1188

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe someday my story will pass the Bechdel test

Mercedes waves off her mother-in-law like her excited coos are stinging summer gnats. As if her breakneck pace hurrying back through the castle halls isn't enough to make her stomach roil anew.

"—momentous occasion, almost symbolic, really—"

"I am fatigued," Mercedes cuts her off with the first excuse she can think of. It's a foolish one. The Dowager Countess brightens; her pace increases, keeping up with Mercedes's flight.

"Of course, only natural. A healer, then; of _course_ —"

Mercedes whirls on her, heedless of the flood of nausea accompanying the movement. As satisfying as it would be to upend the remaining contents of her stomach in front of her mother-in-law, the point is to _dismiss_ the woman.

"My lady," she says with all the poise she can muster. "I've just seen my husband off to war, and I'm feeling rather ill. It's only natural I feel fatigued. And," she continues, raising her voice just enough to speak over the other woman, "I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. You'll remember I fought at the King's side as a white mage in the war."

She hardly sounds like herself.

"So I'll retire to my room," she says, hoping her trembling voice isn't as awful as she fears. "And I won't be disturbed."

All manner of apologies, excuses, manners bubble to Mercedes's lips. She clamps down on them all and leaves her mother-in-law behind her without waiting for a response. Childish, perhaps, but well-deserved. For both of them.

She doesn't need a healer.

She doesn't want a healer.

Mercedes _is_ a healer. She is...she knows...she knows better than anyone, she...wishes she _didn't_ , but—

Her bedroom door slams behind her in time with the guilt knocking the breath straight from her lungs.

Back at the School of Sorcery, her intermediate white magic instructors had taught their students an exercise. Healing, they said, required more than faith. It required acting upon that faith. And here, they said, was where too many healers faltered; having faith in an outcome out of one's control or within one's comfort was too passive in the heat of battle. One must have faith in one's own actions despite an outcome's fate being unclear.

Make it so, Mercedes's instructors told her. Belief is nothing without doing one's whole-hearted, whole-bodied part to bring reality to life. For life's existence is just as certain as death's. It is the _when_ that changes. _When_ to breathe life into someone. And _when_ to take it away.

The exercise, then, is how to breathe.

Mercedes leans against the door, closes her eyes, and fills her lungs. A slow draw of air through her nose, a slow, cautious exhale between her lips pursed like a kiss.

It was how she breathed when she spread her arms wide, casting rejuvenating sparks over Hilda's poisoned battalion.

It was how she breathed with her glowing hands over Sylvain's bloodied hair, skull cracked but living while her brother gasped his last.

It was how she breathed as her power leeched the energy from some nameless Imperial general, feeling her wounds close as the man's face turned grey and his body crumpled to the dirt.

And now, it is how she breathes to calm herself. Breathing to _breathe_ . Fingers twitching, inching towards her stomach, below, _just_ below…

Black magic reacts to everything destroyable. White magic reacts to everything alive.

Mercedes isn't ashamed when the first tear rolls down her face, nor the second, third, tenth, lost in numbers. "I wish you were here," she whispers, the glow dimming from her hand, still resting on her stomach. 

* * *

Sylvain's mother does not let up.

Every little thing is an offer of kindness: let me call for tea, dear, something soporific; shall we fetch another blanket, for it's awfully chilly, no, I won't hear your objections; stay put, this is the _servants_ ' job, else what do we pay them for?

Mercedes doesn't know how to put her foot down. Doesn't know how to state her refusal without embarrassing her mother-in-law, how to reject these suggestions with tact, how to pull rank over a woman who, until a scant few moons past, ran such a tight household no servant dared even gossip in her presence.

This is Mercedes's house now, but it no longer feels like home. She now understands why Sylvain...regressed as he did once the war ended. And she also feels more self-conscious than ever without him. The last time he was here, after all, she hadn't yet figured out how to ask why he could be so _secretive_ in front of the servants and soldiers yet so brazen in other ways. And now, alone in this place that, after near two years, still feels a bit lonely, Mercedes has no guidance for how to behave like a noble.

It's no wonder she snaps. What should surprise her is how it took a full two weeks into the Great Tree Moon.

"It's far too cold for a walk," Sylvain's mother declares her opinion on the matter as if Mercedes were _fortunate_ to come upon her just inside the reception hall. "It may be spring, but Gautier is a cold land, dear. Your constitution will be much more delicate—"

"Three days before the attack, your son poured himself a brandy from a bottle he'd left on the balcony, downed the entire glass save one block of ice, and licked it inside of me until it melted. Because I asked him to."

Heat floods Mercedes's face almost as quickly as her mother-in-law flushes. She's stunned the woman speechless at the cost of her dignity.

Sylvain's mother remains silent even as the color drains from her face, and Mercedes knows she won't get another chance, not for a long time. Her voice quavers when she says, all in an unapologetic rush, "My body is my own, and I will be the one to decide how delicate its _constitution_ is."

Still flaming red, Mercedes gathers her skirts and her nerves and sweeps past her mother-in-law to pay a visit to three new orphanages and two older soup kitchens.

It is indeed very cold outside. Her fingernails border an unpleasant shade of blue when she finally returns home. Sylvain's mother, however, still bears red in her cheeks when they pass each other at the family stairs.

Mercedes can light a fire without ringing for a servant. She'll visit a new orphanage, barracks, kitchen, shelter as many times a day as her magic reserves will allow if it means that _woman_ will let her be. 

She refuses to break Sylvain's trust like that ever again. His imagined mortification shames her more than the intimate details no one save the two of them needed to know.

Well.

No one but Annie, maybe.

* * *

_To the most gorgeous Margravine Fódlan ever knew (still you, pretty as Marianne is),_

_First: I'm safe. Most of us are. Sreng's not sending their best or most capable. It feels like another test of skills for your favorite Margrave (still me, I hope_ — _if not, please know visions of you entwined in Marianne's arms will torture my nightly fantasies until I die, attractive and curvy as she is_ ).

Several following sentences have been mercilessly drenched in ink. A small winking doodled face has survived the onslaught.

_Second: I hate to ask for the Goddess to spit on us, but I don't think this will take more than a couple months. These aren't farmers and teenagers fighting us, sure, but they're more a righteous militia than an organized assault. I'm not even sure it counts as a declaration of war. I wonder if any more Sreng will defect when they see the Lance of Ruin just running their friends through like nothing. We've already seen a few battalions turn tail and run._

_Mercedes, honestly, it's repulsive. This better just be some minor Sreng warlord rallying his angriest soldiers running a supply raid, maybe trying to get into a pissing contest with me or something. If it turns out to be the entire nation throwing its people at Gautier borders to test the new Margrave's strength, I swear I'll_

More blotted sentences. Sloppy, smeared, like Sylvain hadn't wanted to waste the energy or emotion properly covering his mistakes.

_You get the point. I was going to write something normal, like it wasn't obvious enough how furious I am. But you'd see through me anyway._

The end of the sentence has a large blotch, like the pen stuck to it for a long time.

_What are you wearing while you read this? Lie to me if the answer isn't 'nothing at all, handsome love of my life.'_

_I'm wearing nothing, too. Nothing but that embroidered handkerchief on my_

This page ends after much blank space. Dramatic. Wasted parchment. The last page has only seven words.

_nose. Blanket covers the rest._

Another silly, winking doodle.

_Love, Sylvain_

* * *

Mercedes pens her reply. She does not include her—their news.

She will, yes. But not at first. She doesn't wish to distract him while he figures out the political situation.

* * *

"My mother never had such violent…" Mercedes gesticulates something vague and hopefully meaningful. Annie laughs; good. "Not nearly so regularly, either. Did you?"

Annie shrugs. The black-haired baby in her arms rises and falls with the gesture but remains asleep. "I don't know. Maybe at first? It was really my feet driving me crazy." She kicks out her legs and wiggles the no-longer-swollen feet for emphasis. Mercedes keeps an eye on the baby being jostled about. Dulce, however, seems accustomed to the treatment and does not wake.

"Mercie. If you need anything, you've got to tell me, okay? Anything at all."

Mercedes stiffens without meaning to. "I have my mother-in-law for that," she says, and the second the words leave her mouth, she feels _cruel_.

Annie does indeed look stung. "That's not what I...sorry. I know you can—"

"No, no," Mercedes sighs. She folds her hands in her lap, ignoring her tea. "That was unfair of me. She can just be…" She searches for a diplomatic word.

Annie does first. "Overbearing?"

Well. It could be _more_ diplomatic, but Mercedes admits she's impressed. Annie has been less reserved to milder matters and people. To Felix, for the easiest example.

"Well."

Annie adjusts Dulce, and the baby snuffles. Still does not wake. Dulce is a remarkably peaceable child, at least what little Mercedes has seen of her in the time she and the heads of House Fraldarius have been in Fhirdiad. "At least she stayed home, right? You already seem more...I don't know, relaxed."

"I'm here in... _official capacity_ ." The words feel odd in her mouth, and she's aware she's wrinkled her nose. _Unseemly for a lady of your station_ , she can almost hear. "Before he left, Sylvain said he doesn't trust runners to make it all the way from Sreng to the capital, you know."

"Huh." As Annie thinks, she bounces the sleeping baby. An unconscious little tic; Mercedes wonders how quickly Annie developed the habit. Dulce is the exact number of weeks old necessary for her to be introduced to the King as a bearer of the Crest of Dominic, and not a day younger. "Does he know how...uneasy you are with that?"

"No," Mercedes says quickly. She grabs her teacup and sips from it like it can provide more confident answers. "We've come so far with so _much_. Annie, if he knew how frightened I was, I...I think he might be terrified. Perhaps even more than _me_."

"Okay," Annie says, but she frowns when she says it. Irritation buzzes down Mercedes's spine. She wants to ask. Wants to demand a reason for the frown, challenge Annie's doubt.

But she doesn't. She can't explain where the urge had even come from. So instead, she waits for Annie to ask first.

Yet while the frown remains, Annie doesn't, either. No, she changes the subject to something not baby-related, not Sylvain-related, not _politics_ , and Mercedes lets her.

* * *

Ingrid, however, does not.

"You haven't _told_ him?"

"He has enough to do," Mercedes says calmly, testing the heat of the new teapot with the back of her hand. She's tired of talking about politics, tired of talking about Sylvain, but with her acting in his stead as Margrave, no one lets her speak of other things. She feels like she's rehearsed this conversation in her head so many times that it isn't possible for her to be surprised. "I don't wish to add to his burdens. More tea?"

Sure enough, Ingrid slams a not-gentle-enough hand on the table. "He's a grown _man_ , Mercedes! No, too much," she adds, and Mercedes stops pouring. She swaps their teacups, giving Ingrid the less-filled one.

"Yes," Mercedes agrees. "A grown man at war."

"You don't think he'd want to know he has a child on the way?" Ingrid tries to stare Mercedes down. Queen though she may now be, she is _younger_ . Mercedes holds her gaze with all the patience her experience and memories from school allow her. But Ingrid, to her shock, does not back down. "Leave your...discomfort aside for a moment, Mercedes. Believe me, I _know_ how strange it is to suddenly be...dealing with politics on such an intense scale. My House is—was painfully insignificant. I'm just as unused to it as you."

Ingrid is incorrect. Ingrid was still raised a noble. Mercedes raises a brow, sips more tea, and says nothing. This seems to annoy Ingrid even more, however.

"But the _baby_! He would want to know this. I _know_ him, Mercedes. And—knowing him aside, he is your husband. You should be confiding these things in him. Goddess knows he's told you things he would _never_ have told me. Or Felix. Or Dimitri." The bitterness in Ingrid's voice is poorly masked by embarrassment. Mercedes knows it's not aimed at her, but it only fuels her belief that Sylvain does not need to _know_ yet.

"Ingrid. You're being very kind. But if our child wants its father in its life," even the words make her choke back tears, "then I can't distract Sylvain. What if it affects his fighting? His leadership? If I can't protect him on the battlefield myself, then at least I may protect him from afar."

"That's a weak excuse."

Ingrid's voice is cold like Mercedes has never heard. She recoils.

"Sylvain," Ingrid repeats, "is a _grown man_. Fine, he's emotionally stunted and ridiculous and probably relies on your support more than is good for him. But he's still a grown man capable of being relied on, too."

Mercedes doesn't want Ingrid to see how her teacup shakes. She sets it in her lap. Its warmth feels nice on her stomach, like it could soothe pain from her courses, except—"Forgive me for saying so, but you don't know him like I do."

"True," Ingrid agrees with the admittedly rude statement. "But I knew him when you didn't. And people don't change at their core. That's why we stood by Dimitri when he was...struggling. It's why we put up with Felix, even though he doesn't cry anymore and just verbally abuses us instead. And it's why they've stood by me." Ingrid's glare pierces Mercedes to the bone. "Sylvain has always stood by _us_. All of us. Watching our backs, and yes, I _know_ , even at his own expense. And Mercedes?"

Mercedes doesn't want to answer, isn't sure if she's capable, but Ingrid barrels on. "Sylvain is an adult, he is your husband, and my friend. And as his friend, _and_ yours, I know he would be incredibly hurt if he knew you thought you couldn't rely on him."

"I _can_ rely on him!" Mercedes objects, failing to hide the outrage in her voice. She doesn't flinch as the scalding tea spills on her dress. Ingrid's glare grows impossibly flintier.

"Well, prove it to him. Because you're certainly not convincing me."

* * *

Gautier banners show themselves over the hill two days after Sylvain's birthday. Mercedes hears the blare of welcome horns bright and early and scurries into presentable clothes, heart leaping into her mouth.

He wasn't supposed to be back for another week at least. The roads must have been clear of late-spring mud; thawed too early for her letter to reach.

The maids arrive too late to help her dress but just in time to fix her hair. Mercedes would do it herself on any other day, and it's not like she wants to look particularly...presentable, really, but doing her hair alone takes longer now that it brushes her shoulders. Perhaps it's time to cut it again. But the thought of Sylvain mussing it up, helping her comb it out, laugh when it gets messy again…

"Oh," she gasps. 

"My lady?" the maid adjusting her pins asks. 

"I think my dress is too...tight…" Mercedes trails off, looks down at the small bump. Four months along, a little less, the healer she'd finally allowed to examine her had informed her.

She had invented the flimsy excuse that she would write Sylvain when she was finally showing. That it was true, that it was happening, not to excite him without cause…

Oh, but she hoped the letter had arrived in time.

She shakes herself. "Come. Let's go greet our victorious troops."

The lines of troops filing over the drawbridge take ages. Each knight who approaches the gate astride a horse carrying a banner makes Mercedes grow lightheaded with anticipation. Each time, it's not him.

When finally, _finally_ Sylvain's red hair flashes in the morning summer sunlight—because of course he was relaxed, riding and laughing with new war-made friends, _not_ carrying a banner, because the Margrave did not _carry things_ or, apparently, wear a helmet while traveling—Mercedes lets tears spill over. She does not look at her mother-in-law by her side, does not check to see if the woman cries for her son's safe return.

Sylvain catches sight of her. His smile brightens, and Mercedes wants to run to him. 

She doesn't, because Sylvain spurs on his horse, soldiers lazily parting like they're accustomed to their general's whims, and dismounts in front of her hardly before his horse has slowed. Someone catches the Lance of Ruin he thrusts at them and whisks it away. Sylvain's in front of her, at last, _just him_ after months of blood and loneliness and violence. Only a few months that might as well have been forever.

Mercedes collapses into his arms and meets his kiss like a sunflower craving the feel of the sun. 

Sylvain kisses her deeply, slowly, cupping her face between newly-callused hands. Deeper and deeper, breaking off only to breathe, to taste some new, unkissed part of her mouth. He smells like sweat, steel and summer and Mercedes missed him so _much_.

"I missed you so much," Sylvain whispers against her lips. "I missed you so, so, so much." He hardly releases her while he greets his mother. Mercedes leans away from her and closer to his chest when he pecks his mother's cheek. His armor presses uncomfortably into her stomach. 

Mercedes suddenly has a sinking feeling he has not, in fact, received her letter.

"Let's go," Sylvain tells her with another kiss to her mouth, her forehead. "Come on, let's go home." The word takes on a reverent tone in his voice. Mercedes lets herself be swept up the rest of the bridge, up the stairs, through the reception hall.

Servants greet him with cheer, several of them even blessing him. They're accustomed to skirmishes with Sreng, and Mercedes knows a few of them are even refugees from past attacks. But they disperse the deeper through the corridors they go. Fewer and fewer people.

Fewer and fewer distractions.

Sylvain's eyes flit down to her dress as they round the corner towards the family quarters' stairs. He lets go of her hand, putting less-sweaty distance between them. Mercedes holds her breath, but no, he politely redirects his smile to her face.

"You're a gorgeous sight for tired eyes," he beams, and Mercedes wants to _laugh_.

The idea he thinks her weight's _just happened_ to change while he's away and wants to love her for it...it's funny, so _hilarious_ it almost makes her manic.

Manic enough to say, "I'm pregnant."

A heartbeat of silence, of a pause in his step.

But then Sylvain reaches out, ruffles her hair, says, "That's _fantastic_ news!" and for a moment Mercedes dares to hope everything is normal. Normal in a way it never could be, not like this. But then he starts walking again, chatting and walking too quickly, continuing, "But I'm totally beat. Tell me all about it once I've had a bath and a meal. Maybe a good nap. All three, even."

He walks faster. Mercedes lifts her hem and speeds up, too. The stairs loom before them.

He walks _faster_. Mercedes slows.

Sylvain sucks in a great, shuddering gasp and stumbles. Mercedes hurries to catch him, but he steadies himself first, leaning on the wall just next to the stairs. He covers his face in his hands, heaving great breaths almost like sobs but not quite.

She can't see his face.

"Sylvain." Her voice is tinier than a mouse's. The tips of Sylvain's fingers tremble. No gauntlets, no helmet, just light traveling armor with a sword at his hip. The roads had been clear of more than thawed mud. "Sylvain, I want to see your face."

He mumbles something. "What?" Mercedes reaches a tentative hand out, but he jerks away, like his hidden eyes still know where she is, where and what her body does at all times.

She retracts her hand. But although the volume of Sylvain's voice hasn't changed, now she can make out the words.

"Get a grip," Sylvain's saying, biting out the words like curses, "of course, of course, of course, of course, of course, it's just—"

She and Sylvain have been grateful for solitude in surprising corners of the castle before. Playful escapades, perfect for laughing and moaning and pretending they're anyone but people with power.

Mercedes doesn't think she's been more grateful to be alone with him in their lives.

She stands in front of him, unsure what to do with herself. Sylvain's shaking has calmed some, but his litany of _come on, get a grip, of course, of course, of course_ repels her as surely as a barrier. She's vaguely...ashamed.

_Ashamed_.

Of herself, maybe. Of him—no, not him, it's neither. It's them, the two of them, maybe. The way they can't be happy like their friends, can't be... _normal_. The two people in the entire shattered Kingdom army for whom children were more a source of terror than joy, the two people who wanted and feared the _most_ —

Maybe she really is ashamed of herself, after all.

"Merced—" Sylvain's voice slaps all repulsive thoughts from her spiraling mind. He's yanked a hand away from his face, revealing his wide-eyed profile, and is now scrabbling for her.

With a high-pitched sob of her own, Mercedes shoves her hand in his, Sylvain squeezes their joined hands, and it doesn't hurt.

"It's fine," he says. The half-smile she can see quirking his lips is truly horrifying. Crooked and tremulous, flickering on and off. "It's fine," he says again. 

He's _trying_. 

"It's fine, we're fine, it's good, it's okay, Mercedes, please hold me, because I feel like the shittiest guy in the world, and I think I'm going to break into a thousand pieces if I can't feel you right now."

Mercedes chokes out another hysterical laugh and throws herself into his arms. His whole body shakes. It's not okay, not yet. "It's okay to be scared," she almost but _doesn't_ say.

No, she holds him like he asked. Rocks him, so she thinks—until she stops and realizes Sylvain's the one guiding their trembling movements. Stroking her spine, burying his face between her shoulder and neck, tearstained kisses pressed on her skin in irregular patterns. Like a dance she never learned for some fancy noble ball.

Different, because it's a dance Sylvain didn't know until now, either.


	7. Garland Moon - Blue Sea Moon, 1188

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am always so moved by your emotional responses and general kind comments on these chapters. You do me a lot of honor by leaving them :> (I swear we're getting softer from here, I _promise_ , no one ever _believes_ me)
> 
> I hang out on twitter these days at [@NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites). I love when you all talk to me there!

As much as Mercedes wants to stay holding Sylvain like this forever, for as long as it takes for them to be _normal_ …

He is still very tall. And she is still very…pregnant.

“Darling,” she says into his shoulder. “I need to let go now.” She pats his back meaningfully.

Heaving a shudder of a breath, Sylvain releases her. The summer air feels cooler now without his body close to hers. Mercedes prepares herself now that he no longer hides his face, but the charm’s slipped back like a mask. His eyes aren’t even red. Just a pretty little glimmer caught in his eyelashes.

Sylvain hadn’t looked like this the first time she’d seen him cry. She wonders how he’s done it this time and worries for him.

“Come.” She offers him her hand, and Sylvain hesitates only a moment before taking it. He leads her, not the other way around, up the stairs and through the hall to their quarters. The master suite now. The servants had brought their furniture, but the new rooms feel…hollow still.

“You’re shorter than I remember,” Sylvain tells her like they’re continuing a conversation. He strokes his thumb along her palm, and Mercedes shivers.

“You’re bigger than I remember,” she says back, unsure of what other reply to offer. Sylvain cackles. It’s almost boyish but not entirely sane.

Oddly enough, the strident sound makes her relax. Sylvain hasn’t yet remembered how to _pretend_.

“Then I guess I better remind you later, huh?" At least the smugness in his voice is consistent— “All that’s fucking holy—” Sylvain breaks free of her gentle grasp and covers his face again. His gasps come too hard and too desperate.

Her healer training kicks in. “You need to breathe,” Mercedes hurries to remind him. “Breathe just like—like I showed you, with your white ma—”

Sylvain’s face is a little flushed when he comes back from behind his hands again, but otherwise, no further evidence of tears. “Yeah, I’m good,” he says, the ghost of a laugh in his voice. “Let’s…just keep walking. We’re almost home.”

The last handful of steps to their door take an eternity, but Sylvain moves steadier now. It’s almost unnerving.

“After you, sweetheart.” He holds the door and bows to her as she heads inside.

The door clicks shut behind them. They reach the second door, the one to their bedroom, without incident.

But this second _click_ sounds louder.

Mercedes lights the candles and lamps while Sylvain paces behind her. Manually, with a proper lighter, not fire. It takes longer that way.

The mattress creaks behind her. Sylvain sighs, heavy as a storm, and Mercedes decides the room won’t chase away much more darkness. She blows out the lighter, but their bedroom stays aglow.

When she settles next to him, Sylvain hardly reacts save his fingers aimlessly wandering to touch her hip. Gentle, skittish touches tug the satin of her skirt. Mercedes watches the little dance, because it’s better than watching him. Him, with his eyes flitting around from chair to vanity to fireplace, like the furniture will hold answers their bedroom can’t provide.

Mercedes isn’t sure she can, either. But the least she can do is try.

Before she can make any attempt, she hears Sylvain swallow. “So.” He clears his throat, but it doesn’t do much to hide the quaver in his voice. “Do you, uh, know when…when it…” He does look at her…waistline now, but only for half a breath.

 _When it happened_. He doesn’t finish the sentence. Doesn’t need to.

“No.” Mercedes doesn’t need to, either. They don’t, they don’t need to know every _detail_ —

But she’s always been so scattered. Not detail-oriented in the slightest. Academy days and coursework aside, she can hardly fault herself for not noticing she’d missed one moon, two moons’ courses when she regularly forgets to ring for a healer to take _away_ their pain anyway, can she?

It’s not her fault. It’s not. It’s not _his_ fault.

This, their child is _not_ a ‘fault.’

“No, no, I mean…” Sylvain flails more wildly at her body now, as if _that_ will help. “Do you know…when…?”

He trails off once more. Mercedes doesn’t know whether to be amused by his helplessness or despairing at their terror.

She settles for neutrality. “Ah. I’m four months along, I believe. So according to the healer, we should prepare for the Red Wolf Moon.”

Rattling off facts in words not her own is very easy. Mercedes never realized how comforting cold, hard knowledge can be; perhaps she should write to the Archbishop. He might find it entertaining to know his most forgetful student now appreciates the sureness of memorization.

“Oh, wow, that’s…” Sylvain cracks another forced smile, but it looks less painful than before. “The month the Holy Kingdom was founded. Got big shoes to fill.”

Even if Sylvain’s managed to keep tears at bay, Mercedes knows she’ll be less successful quite soon if he says something…tender again.

“Yes,” she agrees, nonplussed.

“Mhm.”

They sit quietly. Sylvain toys with a loose thread on her sash. Mercedes stares at her fingers in her lap. She hooks her thumbs together, fluttering one finger at a time like the most timid of butterflies. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, squeezed thumbs. One, two, three, four—

Sylvain’s breaths come too fast again. Mercedes glances down, and his fingernails have caught in her sash, but his free hand is covering his mouth. Just his mouth; it does nothing to hide the tears finally spilling down his cheeks, glittering in the well-lit room.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps behind his palm. “Give me a sec—”

Mercedes opens her arms, letting her own prickling tears fall. “Please don’t be scared of crying,” she whispers into his chest when he gathers her body close to his. She rubs his back while he shakes, rocking him, squeezing as tight as she can.

And Sylvain _sobs_ for real now. Shaking, crying, hugging. Just like all those years ago, amplified in a decrepit cathedral where no one could see or hear but her.

“What is _wrong_ with me,” Sylvain chokes out when he finds a moment to breathe. Mercedes thinks it might have been supposed to be a laugh, but if so, it’s the worst laugh he’s ever attempted to lie through.

“Nothing is wrong with you.”

“It’s our _baby_. Our kid, Mercedes. Why can’t I—”

“It’s okay.”

She feels him nod, press a fast, cold kiss on her neck, and she shivers. No one told her body it’s not the time. “I’ll be okay soon,” he insists through another hiccupping sob, another _awful_ laugh. “It’s good, right? We’re…”

“Sylvain, hush, we will.”

Sylvain does indeed quiet. She can practically hear his mind whirring, calming down, speeding up again. Mercedes can feel his limbs losing energy; she knows well how crying can drain the body. But as much as she wishes she had the strength to hold them both up, prop his weight against her, let him support himself on her…Mercedes hasn’t trained in _far_ too long, and Sylvain has just returned from war. His tall, muscled body is simply too heavy for her now.

“Sylvain…”

“Right, right. Too cute.” His voice rasps, but she smiles anyway. She’s sure it’s terrible on her, too.

They both lean back on the bed, facing each other, watching their tears dry.

“I’m probably happy,” Sylvain tells her after a bit, “somewhere, deep down.”

His throat still sounds raw from crying, but he says the words so evenly it _hurts_. And she doesn’t know why.

“You don’t need to talk right now,” Mercedes tries, touching the dip between his throat and collarbone. She hopes he won’t. That fear and stinging hurt churning in her chest frightens her because she has no name for it.

He does. “I just…” Sylvain smooths a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “I just wanted you to know that, okay?”

She doesn’t understand. “Okay. It’s okay.”

Sylvain is half-asleep before he remembers to strip off his traveling gear. He does not ring for a meal, a bath, nothing.

Rather, if he does, Mercedes doesn’t hear him do so. She’s the one who falls asleep first.

* * *

Mercedes wakes up later; Sreng politics, it seems, waits for no one, not even those for whom crying wore out.

Sylvain, she learns from a servant, is in the tactical office. He has apparently been there for hours. Mercedes’s heart sinks at this news.

Should she go check on him? Perhaps he wishes to remain alone, away from her.

Once Mercedes realizes she’s the one who is afraid, her mind has been made up.

“Come on in,” Sylvain says behind the office door. He looks very tired when she enters, but he still summons a weak grin. “You have the tiniest little knock, you know?”

Mercedes can’t help but laugh. The sound clears the tension of _something_ in the air. “Please tell that to your mother.”

Sylvain snorts. “Man. I always forget how much she’d _hate_ war ‘manners.’ You know, she’s never even held a sword before.”

From what Mercedes knows of Faerghus, this is indeed an odd fact. "But she _was_ the Margravine," she sort-of asks. "What would have happened should...?"

Sylvain sighs over his stack of papers. "Honestly, I don't know." His quill keeps moving while he talks; Mercedes envies his ability to multitask. "My father went to war often enough. But as we... _I_ got older," she doesn't think she's imagined the twitch in his shoulders, "my father stayed home more and more. Kind of weird, now that I think about it."

It is weird. Sylvain's slight frown informs Mercedes he genuinely has never considered it before. It's not as though Sreng had calmed the years Sylvain had been the sole heir, nor Miklan worse than a spare. Unless...

Now does not seem the time to voice her musings. Sylvain keeps glancing up at her, at the way a dress once-familiar to him now has been tailored in a way he does not recognize, then hurrying back to stare at his writings.

"What are you working on?" Mercedes ventures to join him by the desk and peers over his shoulder. He's sketched maps on some and written in his neat, military-precise script on others.

His skin feels warm through his sleeves, but it also could be the late-morning sun heating the cloth of his shirt.

"More official reports, now that I'm home and not constantly slogging through mud. Can properly sit down, you know?" Sylvain is conspicuously not using his chair, a fact which makes him sigh the moment he seems to realize. He flicks his eyes askance, and oh, but he _blushes_ when their gazes meet. He clears his throat and tidies the maps more than necessary. "I missed you, by the way. I don't know if I said it. Earlier."

"You did," Mercedes says gently. "It's nice to hear again, though."

She tugs at his arm until he lets her snuggle close. He swallows very, very loud. "I missed you, too."

Sylvain's chuckle tickles the hairs on her scalp. "You're right. It is nice to hear again."

She lets him hold her for as long as he wants and she dares without feeling guilty for distracting him. Sylvain traces each bump of her spine, up and down and up and down, just a little pressure, like he's scared of hurting her.

"It's okay to cry," Mercedes says again when she hears that telling little cough twice in a row.

"I'm sick of it."

"Still."

"Hell, Mercedes. You'll regret saying that." Watery though she knows it must be, Mercedes can still hear that smile in his voice. "I'll cry every damned day if you keep saying things like that."

"All right, then."

She understands what he means by _sick of it_. The morning started late because of last night's tears. Her cheeks feel sore, her eyes still raw, but there are more tracks of emotion trailing down her face.

 _I'm not sad_ , Mercedes wants to say but doesn't.

"I really gotta do work," Sylvain mumbles into her hair after a certain point. His voice still sounds thick.

"I'll leave you to it," Mercedes replies, reluctantly pulling away. But it surprises her when Sylvain catches her retreating hand.

"You wanna join me?" His brave, unhappy smiles are less terrible to see. Or perhaps she's just getting used to them. "Probably good for a _real_ Margravine to know how to do."

Oh, but he is hitting her weak points, isn't he? It's rude of both of them, but...

Mercedes laughs, and Sylvain's smile widens into a true one. "Yes, but _I_ want a chair."

Sylvain, ever the gentleman, wastes no time in magnanimously offering her use of his. She settles into it, arranging her skirt into a neat fan around her feet, and Sylvain spins her towards the desk while she stifles her giggles. "It's boring work," he warns her.

"It does look dull."

"Really, really boring."

"Are you trying to convince me to leave?"

"No!" The teasing flees his voice like she's batted it aside. "No, I'm just—"

Mercedes pats his hand in apology. "I'm staying. Don't you worry." He relaxes. Noticeably. Has Sylvain's every emotion always been so obvious? Or has she merely become more adept at reading them? Both thoughts make quiet joy flutter in her heart.

"Let's be bored together, I suppose." Then, quietly, “Thanks, Mercedes.”

They work on the incredibly dull reports to the treasurer, King, and minor lords of outlying Gautier territories for the rest of the afternoon. Sylvain finally crumples in the waning rays of sunset when they get to doling out compensation to newly-made widows and orphans.

“Did we _always_ make so many—” he chokes out at one point. Mercedes bites her lip to keep from crying, too. She must be strong for him right now. She was not the one who went to war. Not this time.

“We have the orphanages,” she reminds him. “We’re taking care of them.”

“Not well enough,” Sylvain disagrees. “Not while this…while _Sreng_ —”

He draws a great, steadying breath. His eyes gleam with a new determination, not more tears, when he reopens them.

“Let’s figure out what to do.”

“Not tonight?”

“No. Not tonight. But we will.”

* * *

Sylvain takes his time replying to the letters he missed while away. Mercedes thinks maybe he should reply to his friends faster than he is, or at least _open_ the things; he did, after all, miss news of his best friend even _having_ a child months after the fact, much less that child’s _birth_.

"You haven't met Dulce yet," she's brave enough to say one day. All the muscles in Sylvain's back go taut; she can tell even with him at his desk across the sitting room. "She's a very tiny little thing, awfully quiet given her parentage." Her own laugh is a pathetic assault on her husband's already-fraught nerves.

"She'll still be there by the time I'm done dealing with all this Sreng shit," is the only dark, muttering reply she gets. Sylvain continues tearing through post, everything political and nothing personal.

Mercedes swallows the lump in her throat. _No_ , she almost screams. _No, she might not be. You might blink and miss her, might blink and lose your_ friendship _, might_ —

She does not scream.

She doesn't confront him about it, either. Just watches him read letter after letter, set the dullest aside and the most important in a separate pile, ignoring all the more enjoyable ones from the people who care more about him and less about his title.

She doesn't think he'd appreciate that comparison.

But she can't stand to watch him like this, either. So after too-many minutes, Mercedes gets to her feet, unbalanced by the weight of her emotions and her growing child, and leaves their quarters.

She has her own letters to write. And he clearly won't be using the desk in his— _their_ office today.

* * *

Felix sends another letter. Ingrid does, too. But Ingrid, at least, also sends one to Mercedes.

 _I hate to say I told you so, but_ I told you so _, Mercedes. You're both facing the repercussions of your silence now. And yes, you can't turn back time and fix it to make things right. But what you_ can _do is try and make things right_ now _. Just because you two fell in love and married each other, it doesn't mean you know everything there is to know. ‘Getting to know each other’ doesn't end here._

 _I especially hate to repeat words Sylvain's mother told you, because the Saints know even_ I _felt kind of uncomfortable spending summers around her. But really, you_ are _lucky to have found someone to marry you actually care for. Sylvain for sure, but don't forget for a single moment things could have turned out very differently for you. For me. For Dimitri. For all of us. A lot of people like us have to get to know their spouses the second they leave the wedding ceremony. Sometimes they don't even know what they look like. If you look back in Faerghus's storied traditions, you'll know we're all outliers, marrying the people we love._

_I hate wasting all this time and parchment giving you and Sylvain marriage advice, but I guess I should have known I wouldn't be free of covering for him even when he found someone willing to put up with his nonsense for the rest of his ridiculous life._

_You owe me, Mercedes. I expect your next letter to contain a heaping parcel of spearmint leaves, because Goddess knows I can't find any tea of your caliber when left to my own devices in the market. Everyone insists their leaves are the ‘only ones fit for Her Majesty the Queen,’ and I'm hopeless without you to guide me._

Mercedes knows Sylvain won't read Felix or Ingrid's letters. He hasn't made it through their old ones, or the almost-weekly ones from Hilda, Annette's updates, Dimitri's stiffly-personal letters, the occasional ones from Caspar, or, during one surreal instance, something from Brigid that didn't seem overly official but turned out to be written in Petra's hesitant print.

Sylvain had opened that one once he recognized the writing and had laughed, because she was Queen now, not merely a deadly woman on a wyvern. But then he'd set it aside the second he realized they'd been invited to the coronation celebration, which had passed while he was at war.

"You know, you're free to read the Margrave's post when I'm away," Sylvain told her after that.

 _Away_.

At war.

"It doesn't feel right," Mercedes had objected. "Our friends expect _you_ to read them."

"Yes, but if it's from someone we haven't replied to in ages—"

"It's _personal_."

Sylvain had sighed but not pressed the point. Later, he agreed she was right. And he'd sounded so embarrassed, apologetic, and disturbed that Mercedes hadn't wanted to ask what the whole tense exchange had been about.

* * *

The letters aren’t the only confusing topic they can’t broach properly. Despite Ingrid's... _advice_ , Mercedes still has no idea how she's supposed to broach any serious subject anymore. Sylvain has been hesitant about sex, something Mercedes _never_ thought she'd see in him. It's only when she scares him witless in the library one evening, finding him flipping through illustrated books she'd _thought_ were raunchy until Sylvain noticed her peering over his shoulder, slammed the book shut, and ran while babbling something about _research_.

It had been a book about sex _after_...conception. The ensuing discussion had not been very sensual. Their first few times are hardly more so.

"I love touching you," Mercedes whispers to him on the fourth or fifth time. She tucks a loose red curl behind his ear, and it springs back to cover his eye once more.

"Yeah, I—" Sylvain cups her breast and grazes her nipple with his thumbnail, and Mercedes's moan is so _loud_ he almost jumps.

"Oh," Mercedes gasps, because even when his thumb retreats, it's like phantom pleasure. The memory of his touch, an electric jolt she wants to _feel_ more than _remember_. "Oh, more of that." She presses herself closer, grinding against his leg, she's so wet now, she's so, so, _more_ , she wants, _so_ —

"Fuck," Sylvain growls. "Fuck, look at you."

"Mm."

Sylvain brings that thumb back to her breast and slides his other hand between her thighs. She's trembling, riding out a rhythm on his leg, and she practically keens when his fingers rub tight circles _just_ as she's shown him she likes.

Perhaps, were she not feeling so suddenly needy, Mercedes would be embarrassed by how quickly her pace increases. Sylvain stares, lips parted and eyes hooded.

"That's it, sweetheart. Fuck yourself on my hand. Just like that, just perfect like that."

Mercedes buries her face in his neck, screams, and comes.

"Wow," Sylvain huffs a laugh against her lips when she stops shaking enough to kiss him. "Wow, okay, um—"

"I can, again, let's—"

Sylvain _cackles_. "Yeah, okay, okay, okay."

Mercedes swings her legs over him and he helps her steady herself. It's still...new, it's all new, it's all so _odd_ and Sylvain wasn't by her side while she spent weeks braving sudden bouts of sickness and despairing when she needed to let out her favorite dresses sometimes five times a month.

But he's here now, loving her, "I love touching you, too," and even if sometimes on other nights he cries after he comes, or in the middle of the day he has to ground himself, practice that white magic exercise from Mercedes's own girlhood...

Mercedes wonders how lonely it might have been without her by his side on the battlefield. Feels terrible at how _hopeful_ she is that he _was_ lonely.

"Gorgeous," Sylvain groans underneath her. Guiding her. Making her feel good because of him, _with_ him, _by_ him. "Come on, Mercedes, I wanna feel you fall _apart_."

She does. Again. Sylvain waits for her to breathe properly before starting up again, too gently to bring her there a third time, but still enough to get her sighing small moans. And he finishes inside her, because it doesn't matter anymore, and this time, it doesn’t scare him. This time, he doesn't cry.

Mercedes does, though. Sylvain doesn't question it anymore, but it's not like she minds.

Perhaps neither of them ask enough questions, Mercedes wonders as Sylvain helps clean her up, with gentle kisses on her ribs and the delicate touch of a cloth between her legs. Perhaps they need to start.

But as long as they keep needing to cry...Well.

Maybe they don't need to. Not _quite_ yet.

Ingrid doesn't know what he's been through, and neither does Mercedes.

It does not occur to Mercedes, however, that maybe Sylvain doesn't know enough of her, either.


	8. Verdant Moon - Horsebow Moon, 1188

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're almost through the first arc, so if last chapter seemed like, uh, I wasn't going to earn any Fluff Tag, I assure you that means we're almost past those specific related bumps! I feel it's necessary to get through 'em and not just hop straight to the Everything's Fine Ha Ha Ha Politics, but I did want to pat everyone on the head in case it was Too Much.
> 
> Thank you for reading and commenting and making my heart just get warm. Previous paragraph aside, the comments you've left, particularly last chapter, really humbled & honored me. Thank you always for the support.

“I’d forgotten how unlivable Gautier lands are” is Felix’s sentence in lieu of hello the moment Sylvain bounds downstairs to greet the Duke and Duchess. Mercedes follows at a much leisurely pace, but her smile grows bigger and bigger the closer to an equally-excited Annie she gets.

“Way more livable now that you’re here!” Sylvain’s cheer remains undeterred. He claps Felix on the back, and his best friend doesn’t even wince. Annie wraps her arms around Mercedes as best she can—“you’re so round!”—and Mercedes squeezes back like their two lives depend on it.

“I’m so glad we could make this work,” she says warmly. Annie nods over and over.

“Me too! I’m so sorry about the spring plans.” She gushes apologies that Mercedes waves away. She’d been disappointed at first when Annie had canceled their springtime trip. The weather had been too cold, Annie too pregnant, and while Mercedes had been too lonely to pen anything other than a clipped reply, now she feels _she’s_ the one who should apologize. She understands Annie’s dilemma now.

Her apology can come later. For now…

“Where’s Dulce?” Mercedes asks.

“What, you’re not excited to see me?” Annie pretends to pout. It is very convincing. Mercedes hesitates for a half-second too long, and Annie bursts into laughter. “She’s with the nurse. A _nurse_ , isn’t that weird? I took forever to interview people. I wasn’t gonna do it at first, because Dulce is _our_ baby, right? Being busy shouldn’t change that! But then I was thinking and talking to Ingrid a little and my mother, too, and I realized I didn’t want her to be too dependent on me, because what if I…what if I have to, I don’t know, be _away_ , just like my—”

“Maybe we should see to our rooms,” Felix interrupts the flood of excitement in as polite words Mercedes has ever heard from him. “Make sure Sylvain didn’t let them decay while he was away.”

Mercedes expects the barb to stick, but Sylvain’s disappointed sigh sounds genuine. “Missed you too, pal.”

“Oh! Right. Anyway, Mercie,” Annette offers one final bubbly comment, “I’ll bring her around later, maybe for dinner?” Mercedes nods, and Annette’s happy smile warms the whole drafty castle. “Great! See you then.”

The heads of House Fraldarius whisk themselves away as breezily as they can, given Felix makes up for half of that small population. Sylvain watches them go with his hands on his hips and a peaceful look on his face.

Mercedes loops her arm in his, and he pats her hand without looking. It squeezes her heart in the best twinge possible, the way he always knows what her hopes are when she wants to be close. “I think he’s forgotten Gautier winters,” Sylvain tells her without looking at her, just staring at Annie and Felix’s retreating forms. “They’re way more unlivable without friends.”

The warm tone of his voice throws Mercedes off. She hasn’t figured out if the thought saddens him before he’s turning that warmth on her in form of a cheeky grin.

“It’s the hottest moon of the year,” Sylvain reminds her.

“Yes,” a bewildered Mercedes replies. “You’re not going to complain too much, are you?”

Oh, but he will.

“Not at all.” Sylvain’s grin grows positively mischievous. “I’ll be too busy enjoying listening to _Felix_ complain. He hasn’t been back in ages, and the last time it was the Verdant Moon he was a kid, and you _know_ how stubborn he gets about shit like _endurance_ and _resistance training_ or whatever. He’s not gonna remember things could be _so_ much worse.”

Mercedes covers her laugh with her free hand. Annie will complain, too, but most likely not nearly so much, and probably due to her concerns for Dulce.

Mercedes hopes she can calm those nerves, if any do wind up plaguing her best friend. If a child can stand Gautier’s chill even in the summer and grow up into a strong person like Sylvain, Mercedes is certain any child of Annie’s or Felix’s can stand it, too.

After all, her own baby kicks strongly enough no matter the weather.

* * *

Dulce sleeps through most of dinner.

Felix does not offer to let Sylvain hold her, but this is mostly because he takes his groggy daughter from the nurse almost the second he grunted passably-respectful greetings at the Dowager Countess and sat down.

Sylvain does not ask to hold the baby, just like he did not ask Ingrid in Fhirdiad. But his mother, much to Mercedes’s shock and repressed anger, does not, either. In fact, as far as the Dowager Countess is concerned, Dulce might not even be present.

“How are you finding Fraldarius, Duchess? Amiable enough, I hope?”

Annie startles and snorts a laugh, knocking her spoon against her delicate soup bowl. She misses the disapproving pinch to Mercedes’s mother-in-law's lips. “Oh,” she catches herself, comprehension dawning, “oh, you mean the Duchy. Not…yeah, it’s quite lovely! Everyone’s been so welcoming.”

Mercedes wonders what Annie could mean, given nary a blush graces her cheeks. But when Sylvain laughs in his almost-quiet ‘respectable noble’ way and pokes fun at how _amiable_ the Fraldarius seated at their dinner table is, it’s _her_ turn to blush.

Goddess preserve her. Is sex all Mercedes thinks about these days? She glances at Sylvain out of the corner of her eye, like he’s to blame for her positive opinion of the…activity. She thinks she’s been subtle, but Sylvain manages to catch her eye anyway, and, as if he knows the trail of her thoughts, winks.

No one else notices, and Mercedes blushes harder.

“The people probably like her better than me,” Felix says. Annie exclaims in protest, swatting his arm, and Mercedes sucks in a gasp on Dulce’s behalf. But Felix’s smirk stays on and Dulce stays in his arms.

Mercedes’s mother, come to think, had done the same. Through hazy memories, Mercedes can remember her hoisting two-year-old Emile over her shoulder like he were nothing more than a bag of giggling flour. Even the occasional half-sibling found themselves begging their step-mother for attention, as they certainly would not from—

“Ugh, no one wants that!”

Annette’s wail of dismay cuts through Mercedes’s thoughts. When she comes back to herself, Felix’s smirk is tempered by love and Sylvain is shaking with repressed laughter.

“Always knew you were talented, Annette,” he says, that ‘proper noble’ tone long gone with his wine, “but wow, if I’d known, I would have—”

“That’s why you _didn’t_ know!”

Mercedes wonders if she should chime in, make it clear her scattered mind has wandered, but the conversation topic becomes clear soon enough: “It would be a good place to start,” Felix disagrees. “It’s home now, isn’t it? It’s probably the best place to build an opera house. We wouldn’t have to waste resources building one elsewhere. And Annette’s the only one who’d find any decent singers. Besides her, I mean.”

“But I have to walk through town every day!” Annie whines. “Every single person will laugh at me. ‘Oh, there goes our Duchess, singing those—‘”

 _Ah_. Now Mercedes is having trouble not grinning, too. “I think it’s a splendid idea, Annie,” she says encouragingly, but Annie just sticks her tongue out.

“Her Grace has a point,” Sylvain’s mother disagrees, and Mercedes sighs into her next bite of bread. “The Duchess of Fraldarius has no business parading the streets of her castle town singing ridiculous melodies. I guarantee you the bawdy houses will waste no time picking one, twisting the most innocent of lyrics to ridicule the ruling class.”

There is an awkward pause, one Mercedes’s mother-in-law seems content to ignore. For all the four of them are best of friends, all in varying degrees of power, the Dowager Countess still feels like the true head of the table.

“Well,” Annie begins with an uncomfortable giggle, and a surge of unexpected bravery makes Mercedes speak over her.

“The _bawdy houses_ will look for any twisting of the most innocent,” she declares, wiping her mouth as delicately as she knows how. “Embarrassing as it sounds, it’s their whole business. They’ll ridicule whatever they please, and if they can’t find something, they’ll invent one.”

Felix is bright red. So is Annette. Sylvain is not, just entertained, and Mercedes doesn’t even care.

Well. Not really.

It feels a little…good, actually.

The Dowager Countess does not agree. “So the less ammunition they have, the better. Surely you’ve been to war enough to know not to give the enemy more—”

“They’re not the enemy, they’re our subjects,” Sylvain cuts in smoothly. “And if the _bawdy houses_ ,” he can’t fight a grin at Mercedes’s choice of words, and she resists toeing his boot under the table as punishment, “want to dole out songs about how many beasties the duke wants to eat—”

“Sylvain!”

Sylvain ignores Felix’s outrage, but not his blush. “Aw, Felix! _Now_ you’re fitting into Gautier lands again! You look just like you did as a kid.”

Felix, unlike her, does not resist kicking Sylvain under the table. Mercedes knows this because Sylvain winces, and because she feels the aggressive air zoom by her own shoe. She sucks in another gasp, but Dulce, who has finally awoken in Felix’s arms, only blinks sleepy eyes back at her when Mercedes looks up to check.

“Well, it’ll give the townspeople some jobs,” Annie says, much too loud, and shovels more bread in her mouth like it will stopper the whole conversation topic.

“Good girl,” Sylvain says approvingly. “Now you’re thinking like a proper duchess.”

“She _is_ a proper duchess.”

After dinner, Annie asks if Sylvain wants to hold the baby. Sylvain says no. Mercedes’s heart sinks for a fraction of a heartbeat, but Sylvain tucks his head over Mercedes’s shoulder, presses his hands on her stomach, pecks her cheek, and says more into her ear than to Annie, “I’d rather hold my own baby first.”

Later, when the Gautier summer she’s become accustomed to leaves them both sweating and exhausted on their bed, Mercedes realizes Sylvain could have meant her, not their baby.

But that seems such a silly question to ask be clarified.

* * *

“Stop,” Felix says flatly, not even looking up from the board game. It’s his turn, and Mercedes knows for a fact he has never once beaten Sylvain at chess, at least not during a game where he hasn't accused Sylvain of ‘going easy on him.’ Whatever Felix is criticizing, focusing on such distraction does not seem to be his most strategic choice.

“Stop what? Stop winning?”

“No.” Felix glares from over his dwindling wooden army. “Stop eyefucking your wife. We’re right here.”

“There are children present,” Annie agrees, but there’s less venom in her teasing. She squeezes Dulce for emphasis, who mumbles high-pitched bubbly complaints. Mercedes smooths her fuzzy black hair.

“I didn’t mean to offend you,” Mercedes apologizes to Felix, but he snorts and jabs a bishop in Sylvain’s direction.

“It’s not _you_. It’s _him_ , as ever. Why are you always like this?”

Sylvain shrugs and makes a great show of stretching. “My wife’s beautiful, no way around it. What can I say?”

“You can say, ‘Sorry, Felix, I’ll calm down,’” Annie suggests in a hilariously terrible imitation of Sylvain’s voice. Mercedes, who has been growing pinker of face the longer this conversation continues, wonders if Annie ever tries to imitate Mercedes, and if so, how successful the attempt is.

“’Sorry, Felix, I’ll calm down.’” Sylvain’s imitation of Annie’s imitation does not impress Felix, but it does make both women laugh. Dulce joins in a second too late, but the confused, burbly giggles send Annie and Mercedes laughing all over again.

Later, Sylvain does apologize, but to her, not to their friends. “I’ve been thinking,” he says slowly once Mercedes assures him she’d not been offended in the slightest. “I feel like I’m using you. That’s why I was staring, actually.”

Sunset traces long shadows through their window. Mercedes is half-dressed in her nightgown. Her bath had been long, thorough, and nicely-scented. Sylvain has seemed distracted all day—though it hadn’t affected the way he cleaned the board of Felix’s pieces almost to taunt him before swooping in for a win—and after the teasing from earlier this afternoon, Mercedes had thought, hoped, _hoped_ it meant Felix was right about the…

Well.

But no. Sylvain remains fully-dressed. She returned from the bath to find him lounged on the couch, sprawled in the most undignified manner. It is not an ideal position for a pregnant wife to join him, and the sight stings more than she wants to admit.

Mercedes sits on the edge of the bed instead, still hopeful despite his words. “Using me?”

“Do you remember our first time together?”

“Yes.” The response is automatic. How could she not? The question, the anticipation, the kissing, the oil…

Sylvain smiles at her. There’s something almost like embarrassment but closer to shame coloring the edges. “Do you remember what we talked about? Beforehand, I mean.”

“Y—” Mercedes blinks. Blinks again. “The…We talked about…You asked me if you could—”

That sad smile, the one she hates to see _now_ but knew she loved him for it the first time she saw it _back then_ , reappears. “No. I think we talked about how you had a bad day. I think.”

Mercedes can’t remember.

“And the day before…do you remember? Someone attacked us—well, me. In the marketplace. We were buying cooking supplies.”

“Right…” This Mercedes _does_ remember. The sibling of one of Sylvain’s jilted lovers. He had screamed, grief-stricken and enraged, and had lunged forward with an expensive, dangerous weapon. The guards had been too far, or perhaps too shocked, to react. The only reason the two of them escaped literally unscathed had been because of a silly game Sylvain and Mercedes had used to play in school and had turned into a combat maneuver. “Yes, the man with the…sister.”

Sylvain waits, but Mercedes says no more than that. Why should she? He understands.

“I didn’t really want to talk about it then,” Sylvain finally admits. “But I feel like maybe we should have.”

Mercedes isn’t connecting any of these topics. Felix’s accusation, Sylvain using her, their first time together, a man whose name neither of them knew…But so much shame, an emotion Mercedes _knows_ is unfamiliar to him, still lines every shadow flickering over Sylvain’s face.

“Shall we talk about it now, then?”

Sylvain shakes his head. “I just…no, not really. But I was talking to Felix the other day.”

Mercedes offers him a brave smile, heart hammering. “I should hope so.”

It works, at least a bit. Sylvain snorts and some of that awful emotion flees his expression. “Sometimes I’m a good host, I know. I should know more than offering people a bed at this point, right?” He winces at his own words, and Mercedes stifles a sigh as the disgust returns. Oh, if only he could _stop_ this self-flagellation. “Ugh, wow, bad joke. Anyway. We took a long time to get to this point, right?”

He looks at her, like these words should be meaningful. And yes, they ring some vague, unhappy bell in her memory, something from long ago, from another night when Sylvain hated himself enough to refuse to touch her. But the words themselves mean little, if not nothing to her now. “I suppose we did.”

Sylvain settles back into the couch, tucking his hands behind his head. “I just feel like I’m using you,” he says again. “I feel like I’d rather touch you than talk.” He laughs, derisive, shameful, Mercedes hates it because it sounds familiar. “Saints, Mercedes. I really wanna just shut up and come over to you right now. Just…” Sylvain closes his eyes. The only reason Mercedes sees his shiver is because she was searching for it, hoping for it. She relaxes, hopes, is disappointed when he does not make good on his words. His next words, however, sweeten her tight bitter fear with the cool feel of relief.

“I don’t want to touch you when I’m feeling bad. Mercedes, I don’t ever want to associate your…body with me feeling _bad_.” Sylvain peeks out at her. Red mottles his cheeks when he catches her open stare. Mercedes almost feels the weight trying to pull the words away from his tongue when he adds, “I think…we…should talk more.”

“Yes, of course,” Mercedes replies within instants, because _yes, of course_ , yes, why wouldn’t she want this? Why wouldn’t she want to see that shame leave his expression, hear his sigh of relief, feel and taste his _I love you_ on her lips?

They go to bed, Mercedes cuddling Sylvain’s side, and Mercedes’s nightgown stays on until morning.

The confusing disappointment remains until morning, too.

* * *

“Mercedes! Mercedes, wake up!”

Mercedes jolts into consciousness to find a not-quite-awake, slightly-drunk shirtless Sylvain looming over her. “What’s happening?” she forces herself to ask. “Is Annie—”

“Dulce’s fine,” Sylvain slurs, and Mercedes gapes, because how did he _know_ it was what she meant, but he rushes on too soon: “What about our baby? What about me?”

Mercedes stares. Sylvain pinches his brows together when she stays silent. “Mercedes!” The desperation in his wail alerts her this not-quite-awake shirtless Sylvain is very much past the point of ‘slightly’ drunk.

“Is Felix safe?”

Sylvain is big. Felix is slight.

Sylvain can handle much more liquor.

“Yes, I said he was!” He had not, but Mercedes doubts saying so will soothe his oddly frantic behavior. “Mercedes. What about our _baby_? Did I fuck up? All these _months_? Mercedes, I’ve been at war, and you have no idea how many _times_ I slept like this!”

Her eyes have adjusted in the dark. Either that, or it’s close to dawn. Sylvain’s eyes are huge, dilated, and terrified. That shame is back, but it wavers, like maybe it has some hope to depart.

Mercedes is mystified. “Like…like what?”

“Like this!” Sylvain flops on his stomach, and the bed creaks. He shoots up again, causing it to groan once more. “Oh, shit! Oh, fuck, are you okay? I can’t do _anything_ right!”

“Sylvain!” Mercedes musters as much sleepy irritation as she can manage to fuel her snappish response. “Of course you can. Whatever is the matter with sleeping on your stomach?”

“ _Because you can’t_!” Sylvain’s…his _lower lip_ trembles.

“Are you going to cry?”

“Don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not.” She wants to.

“I can hear it in your voice. It’s not funny.” Sylvain heaves in a great deep breath, not even his typical masking cough, and oh, sweet Goddess, he really is going to start sobbing, isn’t he?

“Why do you think it’s a problem?” Mercedes asks much more gently. She takes his hand in hers and smooths her thumb across, back, across, back his knuckles. His breathing evens.

“My back hurt just now,” he mumbles. “Woke up because my back hurt. It never hurts like this.”

White magic sparks to Mercedes’s fingers instantly, but Sylvain bats her away.

“No, what if you hurt the baby?”

“Sylvain, why would _you_ sleeping on your stomach when _I_ can’t hurt our baby? I’ve never slept like that. You know that.” For all her amusement, Mercedes is tired, rapidly approaching the point of cranky, and the baby has indeed wriggled around like it can hear its father’s terror and wishes to fulfill a prophecy.

“But I’m the father,” Sylvain does indeed remind her, like she’s forgotten. He sinks back down, cautiously now. On his side. “What if the shit I do affects it? Mercedes,” up he comes, “what if the baby’s wasted? I’m so…I’m so _drunk_.”

This probably is not the time, nor the correct mindset for either of them, to explain to Sylvain no, it’s only the one carrying the child who must be concerned with such things. Mercedes knows Sylvain is aware of this. She knows Felix is.

But Sylvain’s anxieties haven’t always made sense to her, anyway. Perhaps he was right the other day. Perhaps they should be talking more and touching less. There’s so much she needs to know.

 _The more she knows_ , a too-tired and too-honest part of herself whispers, _the less she needs to share_.

“Nothing you do to your body affects the baby,” Mercedes says instead, imbuing the statement with as much firmness as her fatigue and kicking child allow her. “It hurts because you’re older now. Sleeping on your stomach isn’t the best for your back.”

Sylvain has nodded along with each word she’s uttered like it’s music and he’s a metronome. When he opens his mouth to reply, Mercedes prepares herself for more objections and is unsure if she has any patience to handle them. “I’m so _old_ ,” is all he says, however, and he flops back down for the third time—on his stomach once more.

Mercedes’s body and mind are too exhausted to laugh, much as she’d love to. And in the morning, Sylvain’s hangover requires enough delicacy it’s not worth bringing up his delirious, inebriated nighttime terrors.

* * *

The first time Sylvain says Dulce’s name, it’s not even to the baby or her parents’ faces. It’s in private and to Mercedes.

“Fuck, it’s so stressful watching them sling Dulce around like that,” Sylvain complains in their office. Sreng’s been quiet for far too long. Mercedes thought perhaps they should send out more troops to the border in case of a surprise attack, and her mother-in-law had, for once, agreed. But Sylvain had refused, declaring it a perfect time to direct trade and provisions caravans to their currently-stationed troops. Escorted by Gautier soldiers, of course, but those soldiers were to return with their charges immediately upon delivery. They would not be staying.

Mercedes feels this invites disaster. Sylvain insists it will invite curious Sreng emissaries. Half his small court is divided.

“She’s a bit older now,” Mercedes tells him now. “Babies are rather resilient. More than you might think.”

Sylvain’s scoff is more of the snarl of an animal whose scar was just prodded. “No, I know that pretty well,” he mutters. Mercedes thinks this is a prime opportunity to try talking, to see what secrets of his past he’s never wanted to share. But he continues before she can pose a question. “But watching Felix do it, just kind of…picking her up like that, not even looking at her sometimes? I mean, I guess I should have expected it from him. But Annette’s pretty like—” he makes an almost violent yanking gesture, and it startles a laugh from Mercedes’s voice.

“Really, I wouldn’t be so alarmed,” she assures him. With effort, she gets to her feet, wanders to his desk, and pats his arm. “My mother was the same way with my brother and his siblings, and my brother…well. He grew up perfectly strong.”

Too strong. Strong enough to kill all those siblings for reasons she’d never know. Not strong enough to withstand Ingrid’s Relic.

Mercedes shakes the melancholy from her mind and smiles again to soothe Sylvain, but he’s looking at her with a slight frown to his features. “What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t know you had siblings,” Sylvain says, and her heart plummets like it’s been struck by a spike of ice. “I mean, I thought you just had one brother.”

“I…”

She’d never told him.

She’d never told him what she’d been through, what she’d _really_ been through.

Not what her mother had been through. Not what Emile had been through.

Not what her _mother_ had been through.

Her mother had died of an illness while Mercedes was at war.

“They were my brother’s siblings,” she tries to say, to explain, but it only makes that frown deepen.

“Your…stepfather had another wife? Before your mother? Or…” Whatever expression her face has frozen into makes Sylvain’s eyes widen. He clenches and unclenches his fists, like he wants to touch her or stand up, but he doesn’t, and Mercedes doesn’t know if she’s relieved he won’t.

The horror marring his handsome features terrifies her.

Sylvain does take her limp hand then, running his thumb along her trembling fingertips. He smiles at it and brings it to his lips. The heat of his kiss brings Mercedes back to herself. She clears her throat, but her voice is still thick when she says, “No, I…It’s a very dull story. I’m sure I’ve bored you with enough of it before—”

Sylvain’s sad, wry smile against her fingers shuts her up as surely as if he’s cast a silencing spell, something he had, amusingly enough, never managed to master. And that ancient, cacophonous silence between them only grows. “Oh, sweetheart,” he finally says to her, almost hurt but too full of love to make her feel anything other than scared, guilty, and embarrassed, “what are we gonna do with you?”

Mercedes thinks of Ingrid’s letters, of Annette’s teatimes, of Felix’s unknown conversations, and wishes she could convince herself they’d truly been unwelcome.

 _Mercedes_ was never supposed to be the one to speak of secrets.


	9. Horsebow Moon - Wyvern Moon 1188

“I…”

Mercedes’s voice chokes on the words she’s not sure how to say. Her hand rests in Sylvain’s hand without feeling, not even with his thumb gently stroking the skin over her knuckles. Sylvain watches his fingers’ movements over hers. When seconds pass, seconds that may as well been eternities, and Mercedes still cannot find the proper words, Sylvain sighs and releases her.

“No worries. Won’t pry.”

His smile breaks her heart.

"I just..." The baby twists inside her, like it senses its mother's, its parents' concern. _Their_ baby. "I wouldn't know where to begin. With—with such a small little story," Mercedes hastens to correct herself.

The words taste like lies even on her own tongue. Judging by the hurt, disappointment, resignation on Sylvain's face, he knows, too. She tries again.

"It…isn't a very happy story."

That sounds familiar, but Mercedes can't quite place where she last heard it.

"I know all about those," Sylvain smirks. But the curl to his lips quickly falls. "Just not...you know. Everyone's."

Mercedes waits for him to add something to the effect of "and that's fine!" Because that's what Sylvain _does_. He pushes boundaries and he retreats. He pushes too far and he runs away.

But this time, he waits. And Mercedes waits a beat too long. He shrugs and pushes her _away_ , pulls _himself_ closer to the desk and bends over his work again. "Eh, said I wouldn't pry."

"I didn't expect to talk about it," Mercedes tries. Tension ekes out of Sylvain's shoulders, and words, useless words come out in a rush. "It's nothing, really, nothing we haven't spoken about, it's...family things, I didn't know you didn't _know_ , darling—"

"It's fine," Sylvain dismisses it. He may appear _more_ relaxed, but he does not appear _relaxed_ in the slightest. "I meant it, Mercedes. You don't have to tell me stuff you don't want to."

 _I do want to_ , a tiny voice in her mind screams. A too-tiny voice.

She doesn't, really.

"I'm going to..." She casts about for an excuse and finds nothing. "Don't...work too hard. I'll be back later."

The baby keeps her from fleeing the room as fast as she could. Their office door swings closed too slowly to trap Sylvain's reply:

"Kinda bummed you can't look at me when you say that."

* * *

Mercedes cannot find Annie anywhere.

This last moon and a half, she felt like she couldn't walk anywhere in her home without tripping over her best friend. Mercedes walks slowly even when not seven months pregnant, and Annie zips about even when not relieved to be no longer saddled by the weight of a smaller person herself. But now, when Mercedes is _searching_ for her, _not_ trying to hurry to her bedroom with her husband, _not_ trying to hurry for the washroom for the fortieth time that day, _not_ in a solitary sort of mood...

"The Duchess is in the nursery, I believe. Lady Gautier."

Mercedes leaves the servant less unsure if she should disturb mother and child, or if she should shame herself by asking if the servant means _the_ nursery rather than a temporarily-converted guestroom.

Well. Mercedes has always done things herself. What does it matter if this 'thing' is asking her best friend for assistance after Goddess-only-knows too long?

Resolute, Mercedes squares her shoulders, rounds the corner, and collides face-first with Felix.

Rather, she _almost_ does. Felix's sense of awareness and light step mean he dodges with ease and steadies her in the same movement. His gentle touch is almost enough to bring tears to her eyes.

"I beg your pardon, Felix!"

"Don't." He watches her as she brushes nonexistent specks from her let-out dress. "You should be more careful."

"Yes," she agrees before he can launch into some lecture about...about her pregnancy, her responsibility, what if it hadn't been him but someone less surefooted, she should know her way around by now...

Felix speaks anyway. "Annette would kill me if something had happened."

That surprises a laugh out of her. The slightly-hysterical sound clatters about the walls. Of course. Such a response is just so...

"Never change, dear," she tells him. He wrinkles his nose.

"You sound like Sylvain."

At the mention of her husband's name, Mercedes's smile falters. Felix sighs that sigh he only seems to reserve for his best friend.

Mercedes can relate, except she never vocalizes hers to Annie.

"What did he do now?"

"Nothing. I'm being quite serious, Felix," she insists when he narrows his eyes. "I…It was my fault. I fear I've made a mess of things."

"No, you haven't," is his automatic reply, and Mercedes winces.

She thought she didn't want people to know anything. But now, now that the protection has started to slip...

"I…I did. I wasn't...honest with him. I didn't lie, of course I'd never _lie_ to him, but..." The tears that had threatened when Felix had caught her spill over now. "Not being open about everything...well, that's not honest, either, is it? And I feel just terrible, but I…I don't know how to fix it. How to begin, how to...Oh, just listen to me talk! I keep saying I want to _talk_ but I can't even talk like this—"

Felix's scoff interrupts her so abruptly she steps back. "Shouldn’t you be telling someone else this?”

Mercedes staggers back again. Felix fixes her with an oddly scrutinous glare, folding his arms and staring her down. Not turning his back, despite his unreasonable cruelty. “I _was_ looking for Annie to do just that,” she says feebly, reeling too much to defend herself. “I can—”

“No. Someone like your husband.” Felix’s mouth flattens into a hard, judgmental line. “Like Sylvain.”

The tears stick to her cheeks.

_I’m scared of being alone. I’m scared of being known._

Mercedes can’t speak.

And just like that, the disdain falls from Felix’s posture entirely. He flushes, rubs the back of his neck, like his reddening ears have finally felt the cold bite of his own words. “…But I guess you can tell me, too. If you want.”

Mercedes nods, swallowing around a throat thick with emotion. She gestures to the family stairs, and while Felix darts his eyes behind her where the training room had likely lain in wait for him, he follows her upstairs to her favorite sitting room without further complaint.

* * *

Felix holds his teacup—a nutty, spicy blend Mercedes knows he prefers—but doesn’t drink from it. He’d been silent the entire time she prepared the kettle and poured the teapot, and such silence has continued. Mercedes knows she needs to speak first, but also knows he probably feels just as, if not more, uncomfortable than her. It’s not out of consideration for her he remains quiet.

But it is out of consideration for her he’s here at all.

Mercedes eases herself into her armchair. It’s a newer favorite; Felix sits in the older, plusher one that no longer supports her back.

She needs to breathe. It’s not just the exertion of walking this short distance upstairs and bustling about for tea. It’s pain blocking her lungs. It’s fear.

 _Breathe_.

Like white magic. Like healing.

“I told you I ha—had a brother, right, Felix?”

Felix’s eyebrows lift in time with the harsh sting that, after all this time, still jabs into her chest.

 _Breathe. Like healing. Like faith_.

“You hadn’t used past tense, no.” Felix swallows and she can see it. “I’m sorry. I know it…”

“I know you do.” Mercedes smiles at him. He hides whatever expression he’s now made behind a long sip of tea. “Thank you.”

Felix doesn’t seem interested in speaking up again, so she continues while he drinks his tea as long as physically possible. “My brother had siblings, too. But I…only had him.”

_Hey, hey, Emile! Learned a new word today! Big sis isn’t around, huh?_

_She is. She’s—_

_Whatever. Maybe she can learn a new word, too!_

_She is! I swear. She’s just around—_

_‘Whoreson!’ I learned the word ‘whoreson’ today! Do you know what it means?_

Mercedes wishes they’d stopped by the kitchen, despite her heavy breathing only halfway down the hall earlier. It would be nice, maybe, to have cakes.

“I think it was very hard on him,” Mercedes says thickly. “He wasn’t…close with them.”

Felix tucks the teacup against his chest. Holding it close like a child. Mercedes closes her eyes.

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” Blunt as ever, that Felix.

“They treated him poorly.”

“Hm.”

 _You can use it, too, Emile! You can use it_ all the time _._

_Leave me alone or else._

_Or else what, whoreson? Or else what? Gonna go cry to mama?_

_I’ll tell Father._

_He was_ my _father first. He won’t listen to you, even if you_ do _have a Crest. It’s not even Mother’s family’s Crest!_

_I’m warning you—_

_Your mama’s Crest-blood isn’t good for much except for getting fucked, is it? She wouldn’t even_ be _here if she wasn’t—if she didn’t_ sell _—if our_ real _Mother could have just stayed!_

Her baby rolls around, filling her with nausea. Mercedes hopes it’ll calm down, it’ll relax, because Goddess, how mortifying it would be if she needs to excuse herself. It’s good they don’t have cakes after all; the pregnancy has, for the most part, been blessedly easy, particularly because of its erasure of nine months’ worth of courses. But those occasional bouts of nausea…

She really doesn’t need Felix to see that right now.

“Sylvain doesn’t know.”

The quiet room grows quieter.

“Why not?”

Mercedes sighs. While the truth pours out, even in small sentences, meaningless, vague things accompanied by ugly memories…

It feels—not _good_ , exactly, but it…feels. No, in reverse: it releases something from her.

Felix’s clipped questions are too direct to let her hide. No wonder he’s Sylvain’s confidante. No wonder he has the King’s ear. No wonder Ingrid adores him like the brother he was going to have been, once upon a time.

Like a brother.

_What’s going on here? Emile?_

_Nothing._

_Oh, but those faces you’re making…they don’t look like ‘nothing’ to me._

_It’s fine, sister. Let’s go back._

_Wonderful. Lead the way!_

_You’re going to end up just like your slut of a mother, you know!_

_I beg your pardon?_

“Well, he does now,” she tells Felix slowly. “I…it just slipped out. You know how these things go with me,” she laughs. It bubbles out more naturally than she thought. She opens her eyes to see Felix openly staring now. His teacup is empty; Mercedes moves to refill it, but he waves her away.

“They don’t. But whatever. Go on, I suppose.”

She pinches her brows together. “They don’t…what? I’m sorry, I don’t follow—”

“You’re good at keeping secrets.” He huffs an embarrassed sigh, folds his arms, and leans back in the plush chair to glare at the carvings on the ceiling. “Whatever. Go on. Why did you hide it from him?”

“I didn’t!” Mercedes hurries to assure him and gets an undignified snort in return. “At least, I certainly didn’t _mean_ to. It simply never needed saying.”

Felix looks dubious. And the more she talks, the more Mercedes begins to feel…

“It’s just…” The baby rolls around again, but back to a more comfortable position for the two of them. She places a hand on her stomach, as if she can soothe it just from her touch on her own skin.

It’s the Wyvern Moon. Soon, their baby will feel its mother’s skin for real. She was an infant herself when Emile was born. She has no memory of the velvety-soft touch of his body, only broken-up memories of the way he wailed when he tried to walk after her but fell on his chubby knees instead.

_Don’t listen to him, sister._

_No. He clearly has something to say. Well?_

_You’re going to end up just like her. You’ll get cast out, too, just like Mother. Your glutton of a mama will, too, when she’s too old._

_I see. Well, Emile—_

_You’ll be alone! Desperate! You’ll sell_ your _body to the first man with gold and a bed, too!_

_Come, Emile—_

_Shut up. Your mother is doubtlessly doing the same now, too. And_ she _doesn’t even have a Crest._

_You fucking whoreson!_

_No! Stay back!_

“Sylvain never wants to talk about his brother,” Mercedes explains. Their baby calms. She wonders if their baby will be so easy to quiet once it’s born. She wonders if it will be as calm as Dulce seems to be.

“So? Miklan wasn’t yours. What does talking about _your_ brother have to do with his?”

Felix, Mercedes knows, had grown up knowing Miklan, too. Judging by the tensions curling his shoulders inward, like unhappy teenage memories made physical, Felix knew at least something of the terrors she can only assume he inflicted. On Ingrid? On Felix? On Glenn?

She doesn’t know what he inflicted on Sylvain.

“I don’t understand you,” Felix says, voice confident and disparaging even coming from his uncomfortable, self-conscious posture. “Either of you, sometimes.”

Startled, Mercedes laughs again. What else is there to do?

Oh, but he does so remind her of Emile. He won’t appreciate her saying so, he never has, but while Mercedes doesn’t understand Felix and never could quite understand Emile…

At least this is familiar.

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You don’t have to tell each other everything, you know. And it shouldn’t be a big deal when you learn something new. You talk about it, or don’t, and you get on with it. You think I understand what Annette’s talking about half the time?” He shakes his head like the very thought is inconceivable, but the tiny smile on his face, the tone in his voice glows with too much fondness.

Felix, for all Mercedes suspects he might believe, has never been adept at hiding his emotions. He has too many for anyone, anything to smother. The worst of the world’s grieving tears never managed to douse the flames of his passions.

“I don’t think Annie does, either,” Mercedes offers. The warmth of his laughter calms the last tremors of her nervous breaths.

She’s not the only one who’s lucky enough to be loved.

“True enough,” he grants her. He inspects his dry teacup. “More tea, please?”

“Why, Felix,” she says, reaching for the pot, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say that almost sounded like a request. Not a demand at all!”

“Oh, quiet.” But he himself shuts up while she pours. He nods in thanks; oh, but how polite court has made the Duke. “I never expected you of all people to cling uselessly to absurd ideals. I’d have thought a healer would know when to try a new…a new…treatment, a new—shut up,” Felix snaps when he catches her delicate muffling of laughter, “I’ve always been terrible at those spells, and you know it. It’s the same damned thing. Switch tactics. You have the benefit of not being on the battlefield, don’t you? Take advantage of it. Try something else. All this moping is ruining our visit.”

The depth of Felix’s concern for them all sinks deep into her heart, takes root, and blossoms into joy. Relief. Resolution.

“I was terrible at tactics, too,” Mercedes reminds him more in jest than anything. But of course ever-so-serious Felix only glares. She lets herself smile then, sipping her tea to cover it. She doesn’t think he’ll appreciate it. “Well. I’d hate to ruin your visit, Your Grace,” she says instead. “And…thank you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” he grouses. He pours himself more tea without asking. Like having her call him by his title in so mocking a tone brought them back to themselves. And then, so softly Mercedes isn’t entirely sure he wants her to hear, Felix adds, “You’ve done the same for me.”

“It was everything,” Mercedes says. The teapot empties, the air lifts, and conversation turns to how whiny a baby Dulce _really_ is at night when no one can get her to sleep.

_It’s not your fault, Mercedes._

_It is! I could have stopped them. Kept Emile from harming his brother. I could have…_

_You are a child, Mercedes. You could no more have stopped such a fight than you could have stopped a charging beast._

_It’s my fault. I know it is. Why can’t we take him with? His siblings will—_

_You know his father will never let that happen._

_But we’re running away, too, aren’t we? Baron Bartels isn’t letting_ us _leave, either._

 _Yes. But your brother is indispensable. And_ we _are. Didn’t I say you can’t stop a charging beast?_

_Emile is stronger than me._

_But he’s even more a child. Emile can’t stop him, either._

“Mercedes,” Felix says in the doorway as she wishes him good night. “You don’t have to tell…people anything. You can do whatever you damn well please with your own life. But…you should if you want them to tell _you_ anything. Even I know that.”

Shock freezes Mercedes’s farewell on her lips.

Felix turns as red as the sunset and brushes past her. “Whatever. I don’t know. You’ll figure it out.” Sylvain pokes his head around the corner, coming upstairs, but Felix hasn’t seen him yet. “The two of you always do, _somehow_.”

She’s not sure who looks more surprised by Felix’s hasty egress—her, or Sylvain. His boots clomp down the hall to the guest quarters noisier than usual. A door slams in the distance like an embarrassed teenager announcing to the world his displeasure.

“Why is he always _like_ that?” Sylvain finally asks, disbelieving laughter fluttering the edges of his question.

Mercedes has no answer to that. But she does have Sylvain standing relaxed and baffled in front of her, so she takes his hand, tugs him inside the sitting room, and tells him she’s mortified of her earlier dramatics.

A rush of cool relief floods her body when Sylvain grants her a lopsided smile of his own. He kisses her cheek when she’s finished her little monologue, moving slowly to give her time to pull away. But she doesn’t.

His lips feel like home.

“You put up with my ‘dramatics’ pretty much every day,” Sylvain tells her. “I’m pretty sure you’re overdue for giving me a taste of my own medicine. Isn’t that right, gorgeous white mage of mine?”

Mercedes meets his kiss almost too eagerly. She presses her thumbs to his cheeks, bringing him closer—

And he’s gone again.

Sylvain rests his forehead on hers and chuckles. “Oops. Talking, not touching, right?”

“Right. Talking,” Mercedes says, and means it. Even as, not yet—“Just…not right this moment, okay?”

“Sure, not now.” She can’t wait for their child to see Sylvain’s smile. “We have forever, remember? Crazy stuff.”

* * *

Although Felix, Annie, and Dulce departed today, Mercedes’s dreams remain peaceful enough. She can’t even complain; they had overstayed their original plan, creeping up on the Red Wolf Moon before their reluctant farewell. Felix, for all he does complain about paperwork, gets antsy when leaving their lands to the Archbishop’s supervision too long.

But Mercedes selfishly wishes they’d stayed. The five years they’d all gone without a word had, in a way, been much easier. The flames of war hadn’t forged them so close back then, and now Mercedes feels she misses every single friend she’s ever made in her life.

Still, she and Sylvain fall asleep easily that night.

Her dreams entertain her for once. A swimming dream; something rare. She hasn’t gone swimming in what’s felt like eternities upon eternities. It’s just like the pond at Garreg Mach except it’s shaped like the puddle of water Annie had tripped in today. Tiny fish nibble at her toes in loving, silly little pecks. They press funny kisses up her legs while she laughs until her sides hurt.

But she didn’t ring for a healer, has no idea why she didn’t, and, with the first pale fingers of dawn creeping past the curtains, she is now paying the price. She awakens to the rhythm of familiar pain, not nearly as funny as in her dreams.

“Sylvain,” Mercedes mumbles. Sylvain remains dead to the world. “Sylvain,” she tries again, but her voice cracks, not rises.

He hears her anyway. “What’s up, cutie?” Sylvain groans into his pillow. He’s not really awake, Mercedes can tell. She wonders if he’s slept poorly after all, if she’s rousing him from an unpleasant dream.

“I didn’t ring for a healer last night,” she explains. Her voice is thick with sleep, but that familiar hot squeeze is slowly, _slowly_ bringing her to her senses.

Sylvain seems to be coming to his much speedier, however. He rolls over—not towards the edge of the bed, damn him, Mercedes thinks _extremely_ uncharitably and feels guilty for it right away—and studies her face in the half-light.

“Why would you need a healer?”

His voice makes it to her ears as muted as if it’s crawling through mud. Mercedes tries to glare at him, but she is already squinting through pain and his expression doesn’t flicker.

“I _always_ need a healer before bed,” she manages not to snap, so she thinks. “I must have…must have forgotten. Again. I keep doing this, I keep _doing_ —”

“Mercedes,” Sylvain says even slower, somehow. A familiar mask has slipped over his face, but it’s familiar in a good, if odd way: it’s the tactician mask, the general mask, the Margrave’s. The one he wears when he must be quick and decisive—so why is his voice so slow? His eyes drop to their mattress, and they widen once, huge, before the stern mask slips back on. “Your courses haven’t come for nine months. Remember?”

“Yes, and it’s been _marvelo_ —”

Mercedes’s fists, which have been creeping to the spot that usual results in the mildest of reprieve, reach her stomach. She freezes.

“It’s the twenty-sixth,” Sylvain reminds her. Oh, but his words are _slow_. “We’re close enough to the—I’m going to ring for the healer.”

“No!”

How has he managed to leave bed so quickly _now_? Mercedes scrabbles for him, fails, but he grabs her hand when it falls. “Mercedes, you’re not doing this yourself.”

“I can—”

Sylvain sets his jaw. His hand is warm but his eyes are cold.

Mercedes dimly remembers the last time she’d seen him like this. In the seconds before he’d charged for a knight clad in horror-black armor, believing himself invincible, heart beating solely for what he thought would be triumph over his perceived living nightmare. “I can,” she says again.

“Maybe for the next one,” Sylvain says. Before the words can properly set her heart alight, another stab of pain has Mercedes’s eyelids slamming shut. He squeezes her hand like a promise, yanks the bell hard enough she _hears_ it almost snap, and returns to her side. “Come here.”

“No,” Mercedes protests again. She squirms in his arms, and it feels terrible. Sylvain withdraws, but stays within arm’s reach.

That _must_ change.

“I don’t want you here for it,” Mercedes says.

Sylvain _recoils_.

And that serious, resolute mask shatters.

“What? Why not?” Sylvain shakes his head over and over and, before she can explain, because oh, it feels _just like Mother said_ , it feels like it’s the first day of her courses, but it’s not, she’s so glad it’s not but it feels just _like_ it, he laughs hard enough the bed shakes and she winces anew. “No, nah, don’t answer. I wouldn’t want me here, either.”

A sharper, tighter, worse pain rips through her, but it’s from horrified heartbreak. “I didn’t—”

“Nah, I get it,” Sylvain smiles, rising from the bed. Mercedes is sweating, but his skin glistens clammy and cold in the gradually-glowing sunrise, too. “I’ll be, uh, I’ll just wait ‘til the healer—”

She doesn’t have enough fingers or toes to count how many reasons she wants to cry right now, but the broken grin telling lies on Sylvain’s lips is absolutely one of them.

“I just don’t want you to see me like this,” Mercedes bites out.

The bed groans its protests under Sylvain’s knees as he clambers over the pillows to reach her properly. His shaking hand upturns, and her fingers twitch. Hopefully, that’s permission enough.

Sylvain indeed takes it as such. He presses a fast, sloppy, unseductive kiss on her knuckles, then one at a time, then the back of her hand. Casting a glance at the door first—still closed, no footsteps slamming behind it—Sylvain whispers, fierce enough it almost sounds like a threat to the Goddess herself, “Nothing will _ever_ change how much I love you. Mercedes. Please. You need to trust me on that, _please_. Please let me stay.”

Frantic apologies announce the healer’s presence even before her footsteps. The door slams open seconds after Mercedes nods and says, “Yes. Okay. Please stay.”

* * *

He does, of course.

He looks just as handsome now being honest with his hand unflinching, unwincing in her tight grip as he had so long ago collapsing into tears in a lonely, darkened cathedral.

Distantly, Mercedes knows she might not want to squeeze his hand so hard. If she breaks his bones in her attempt to steady herself, not enough healers will be able to leap to his aid.

Neither Mercedes nor Sylvain make any attempt to avoid such a fate.

By the time the sun burns high above the rapidly-freezing Gautier lands, however, Sylvain’s hands are unscathed enough, if not a little tremulous, to smooth the soft, thin layer of colorless hair from his son’s forehead.

She might have squeezed his hand too hard anyway, Mercedes thinks as she fights exhausted sleep. That sparkling noon sunlight has Sylvain’s tears glistening gold and bea—stunning, wonderful, loving, _gorgeous, you’re gorgeous, I love you, we love you_ , _so much, I love you so much, thank you for staying, letting me stay_.

Tears still slip from beneath her eyelids as she, Sylvain, and their son, Amine Relle Gautier, curl up and sleep under the watchful eyes of a fatigued team of healers.


	10. Red Wolf Moon, 1188 - Guardian Moon, 1192

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I needed a *wee* bit of a brain break for a while after churning out so many fics in such a short amount of time...So hello again! Off we go to wrap up act 1! Hooray!

Red Wolf Moon, 1188

The look on Sylvain’s face when he enters the nursery isn’t a _bad_ one, per se…but it’s confusing enough Mercedes’s smile fades. “Is something wrong?” she asks as he approaches the cradle with those halting, frightened footsteps of his that never manage to keep him away for long.

Sylvain’s response doesn’t come quickly, so Mercedes’s heartrate speeds up to compensate. She reties the laces of her bodice while Sylvain strokes their sleeping son’s cheek that Mercedes knows from wonderful, frequent, personal experience has the softest, fattest, most pleasant little texture.

“Don’t be nervous,” Sylvain begins, which makes Mercedes nervous, “but the professors from Fhirdiad are coming today.”

“The Profe—” Mercedes brightens, but Sylvain shakes his head before she can even finish the word.

“No, not _our_ Professor. He’s still at Garreg Mach. Why, are we expecting him?”

No, but Mercedes would like to. It’s been far too long.

“Anyway,” Sylvain continues, shooting her another puzzled look from over the cradle, “the ones from the School of Sorcery. The Crest scholars.”

Some dim, unpleasant realization pools in Mercedes’s stomach, but the waters of utter comprehension remain murky. “Well, if I’d known we were to have guests, I would have prepared a more interesting menu,” she says. Puzzlement drops from Sylvain’s face, replaced by more exasperation than she feels necessary.

“Mercedes, they came the second they got our healers’ official missive. It’s been a full week.” The waters are clearing, something about _it’s been a full week_ stirring the surface, and Mercedes refuses to allow that clarity, because Sylvain doesn’t need to talk _down_ to her— “I’m _sure_ you remember when our son was born. A week ago.”

“Of course I remember,” Mercedes snaps without meaning to, stung. Sylvain’s face crumples, flushed cheeks almost as red as his hair, but by the time he’s mumbling apologies and explanations, comprehension now glitters crystal clear and blinding.

 _The Crest scholars_.

“Do we have to?”

Baby Amine’s drowsy little snuffles almost obscure Mercedes’s question in the heavily-tapestried nursery. Sylvain’s fingers still where they rest on the cradle. She’d anticipated an immediate, equally quiet reply, but no: Sylvain just watches Amine sleep, something soft in his eyes and something tight in their corners.

“I…”

She can hear him swallow around a dry throat.

“I don’t know what…else to do,” he says, hanging his head over the cradle like he’s apologizing to their son. “What, we tell them to turn around and march home the second they show up? We…we think of some reason, some…lie about our _baby_ , some reason why they can’t check if he has a Crest? We tell my family—”

Sylvain cuts himself off. Tears glimmer in his eyelashes, and Mercedes’s breath catches: no telling cough, no attempt to hide them. Maybe it’s easier because he’s looking at Amine, not her, but either way, her chest feels warm.

“Do we have to tell anyone anything?”

Sylvain jerks his head up like she’s blasted him with fire. His irises are so, so brown, shiny and rich in color with the unfair, beautiful aid of unshed tears. “What?”

“It’s our home. _Our_ family,” Mercedes declares with a confidence she doesn’t feel. She reaches for Amine now too, stroking the barely-there strands of his hair. “And…there’s no law against it, is there? It’s a common thing to do among the nobility, that’s all. And,” she says, nerves and excitement speeding up her words when Sylvain doesn’t object, just listens like he always does, “it’s more common among _some_ nobility rather than others. Sylvain, surely you know House Gautier is…” What was the word Annie’s father had used? “…particular about Crests, more so than House Fraldarius, even.”

It’s a gamble, because Felix and Annette _had_ tested Dulce a week after her birth. But Crest-bearers were presented to the King and Queen only for the sake of genealogies and registries for Relic use. Discovering earlier merely…accelerated the process.

“House Fraldarius doesn’t have to worry about unfriendly neighbors,” Sylvain mumbles, but the objection is so quiet it hardly holds weight. The gamble has paid off. And as for another…

“I don’t…I don’t want to know. Not yet.”

 _Not like they knew with Emile_.

Sylvain just keeps staring at Amine, keeping those tears at bay. No reaction.

 _Not while Amine remains their only child, at least not yet_.

He doesn’t want to know yet, either.

 _Not like they knew with Sylvain’s_ —

“Yeah,” Sylvain sighs more than speaks the word. Amine’s hair flutters. When Sylvain pulls away from the cradle, hand extended for her this time, a few tears have escaped and dry on his cheeks. No more follow— _not yet_. “Yeah, let’s…let’s tell ‘em to fuck off. Let’s send a runner right now, just tell ‘em to fuck right off. Let’s do it, Mercedes.”

Mercedes ignores the hand and throws her arms around him. Sylvain squeezes her hard enough to choke giggles out of both their lungs, more tears from both their eyes.

“Maybe not worded quite like that,” Mercedes manages to suggests. Sylvain can’t even muster a witty reply, just a vague hum of—hopefully—confirmation. Hand in hand, they leave the nursery in the capable hands of the maid outside the door, and Sylvain gets another servant to find a runner to deliver the message to the esteemed Crest scholars of Mercedes’s alma mater, the Fhirdiad Royal School of Sorcery, to “tell them to fuck off, but be polite about it.”

Later, in private, after a day spent hiding from his mother and preparing for a storm of correspondence, Sylvain finally does break down. Different from but just as intensely as when he first learned she was pregnant. Apology—his—after apology—hers—bounce around their room, reined in by assurance—hers—after assurance—his, and by the time Sylvain feels he’s presentable enough to “show his handsome face to the servants,” Mercedes accompanies him to the nursery.

Sylvain’s voice is dry and cracked from crying; she can hardly hear him when he gathers Amine into his arms with enough gentleness to make a Saint seem unmerciful, settles into the rocking chair, and whispers to his son: “You’re safe now. No one’s gonna hurt you anymore. No one here doesn’t love you, with your—your three strands of hair, _Goddess_ , you’re practically bald, oh, man, I hope you grow more; you are _not_ gonna look good as a bald kid. But I love you for it. I’ll love you for it, babe.”

But Mercedes does hear him, even if Sylvain, hunched over their son, might hope she doesn’t.

She feels the same. About Amine, yes: she wants to shout this vow to each and every star in the sky and then remind them every hour of every day.

But…

No one will hurt Sylvain anymore, either.

Miklan is dead. Whatever pain and cruelties and hatred he tore into Sylvain’s heart and skin and soul has happened already and will _never_ happen again. She was there when Sylvain killed him—once as a monster of a man, once as a monster. Was there when he told her he hated grieving for a brother he never had, told her only that his brother had tried to kill him for his Crest, too. Told her he had scars, and has never pointed them out among the map of past battles immortalized on his skin.

No one was there for Sylvain to help him through that pain and cruelty and hatred. No one was there to heal those scars—or keep them from happening at all—on his heart or skin or soul.

There’s no one to fight anymore. No one to blame. No one who can really take responsibility—not really, not _really_.

Sylvain huffs a dry, pained laugh, and when Mercedes snaps out of her morose, relieved thoughts, he’s smiling at her. Amine waves chubby hands about, trying to grab for every one of Sylvain’s fingers and put them in his mouth. “He’s gonna break _so_ many hearts,” Sylvain says, “worse than me.”

Mercedes smiles so wide it hurts. She sweeps over to her family and presses sloppy kisses to each of their foreheads. “Hm,” she says, trying to rephrase Sylvain’s unhappy sentence, “I think he’ll be capable of just as much love. He has a very good role model.”

Another dehydrated laugh. Sylvain lets Amine steal his pinky and uses his free hand to twirl those ‘three’ locks of blond hair. “Maybe even two,” he admits.

Sylvain has two good role models, too, Mercedes can’t help but think. There may not be anyone to fight—at least, not for some _specific_ scars—but there are plenty more people to help heal. More and more and more with each passing day.

Maybe, that private, shuttered voice in the partitioned-off part of Mercedes’s mind, maybe she has two good role models, too.

More with each day.

* * *

Guardian Moon, 1189

More and more and more and more correspondence with each passing day.

Ingrid doesn’t write, nor Dimitri, but Annie does: “Sorry, I just mean…what did he expect? Not giving an ‘official statement’ wasn’t going to _not_ make people go all squinty-eyed. Are you” a word has been blotted out “three doing okay over there? Everyone in the territory okay? Gossip moves fast and all…”

Gossip does move fast. Word spreads that the heir does not have a Crest and the heads are trying to keep it hush-hush after the _tragedy_ of the _last_ disowned Gautier heir. Minor lords and ladies pierce Mercedes with meaningful stares when they come to give their regards and tithe, disguised as gifts, to the new addition to the castle.

“So when’s the next go at it?” one cheerful, foolish, green young bride of an older lord in the area asks Mercedes. “If nothing else, Amine could have a playmate his age!”

“Your gift was appreciated,” Mercedes smiles, venom in her voice sweet as rot. “I wish you just as fruitful a marriage. Give my regards to your sister.”

The sister, as Margravine Gautier and the entire visiting party are well aware, is an unacknowledged bastard who had served as a lieutenant in the Imperial army during the war and is on Gautier lands only on the terms of her pardon: physical labor for reparation efforts as the lord and lady saw fit.

The visiting party departs soon after. They do not return, but they do send along another “humble gift” of forty-thousand gold and two caravans of mined black sand stone.

* * *

Lone Moon, 1189

“We didn’t make a mistake, right?”

“You’re not going to say ‘we didn’t fuck up, did we?’”

“ _What_?”

“It’s the first time I’ve heard you put it that way—”

“No, no, hold on a sec! Back up! This is a milestone!”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“Four fucking Saints, you know what I mean—it’s the first time _I’ve_ heard _you_ put it that way!”

“We’ve grown so much together, haven’t we?”

“Mercedes, you can’t dump that…that adorable, gooey stuff on me right now. I’m still recovering. Say it again.”

“’We’ve grown so much together, haven’t we?’”

“You’re teasing me.”

“Me?”

“I can’t believe it. You. You! You’re _teasing_ me! Is this how it feels? Is it too late to apologize for every single time I’ve teased—”

“You may, if you’d like. But we’re usually wearing fewer clothes when you tease me.”

“Oh, _da-a-arling_ , we can fix that _so_ fast…”

“I did say ‘usually.’”

“Yeah, we can be pretty… _insatiable_.”

“Sylvain! We’ve still plenty of letters on the desk—”

“What? You said ‘usually.’ We can be efficient. We can _tease_ no matter _how_ much we’re wearing, honey.”

“Don’t—”

“Don’t what? Sorry, don’t tease you? Is that what you were trying to say? Did I interrupt you?”

“Sylvain, please get back here, or I’ll do something truly awful.”

“Yeah? Prove it.”

“…Sylvain. You already know, don’t you?”

“Huh? Know what?”

“We…we didn’t fuck up at all.”

“Fucking— _Mercedes, you need to fucking warn me_!”

“I did. I said I’d do something awful.”

“No. No, you didn’t warn me.”

“You said to _prove it_ —”

“You did something…pretty great. Something pretty amazing, actually.”

“…Oh.”

“Let me return the favor. Just because you’ve been so good for me. So smart. So sweet to me.”

“Oh? Oh, please do.”

“Hm.”

“…Hm?”

“I do know.”

“Know?”

“Yeah. We didn’t…make a mistake. We did the right thing.”

* * *

Harpstring Moon, 1189

Dimitri writes. He feels uncertain about what to do in Fhirdiad, because even six months after Amine’s birth, nobles still gossip, but he has no plans or inclination to make decisions or even official proclamations throughout the Holy Kingdom. He trusts Sylvain and has his support…but quietly. At least until he has a more concrete idea of how long the nobility in the capital will talk, and how seriously.

Ingrid writes. She’s confused but doesn’t see much of an issue as long as things remain calm in the capital and elsewhere—and, naturally, in Gautier. Not all nobles have the coin or influence to drag Crest scholars to their doorsteps with each birth of a child, after all. The main reason tongues are wagging is because it’s the Margrave Gautier of all titles breaking this tradition. She trusts Sylvain and his support…because in the end, Sylvain knows what’s worth protecting. It’s why he was always so good at hurting people. It’s why he was always so good at helping them.

* * *

Blue Sea Moon, 1189

Mercedes wishes her mother-in-law had stayed visiting friends in Daphnel territory longer than she had, despite the woman’s promise of ‘just for the beginning of the first two moons’ stretching through three quarters of the year. She had blustered through the castle as if she—well, as if she _owned_ the place, sweeping straight past Mercedes and even her son and into the nursery. She fussed over Amine as if she’d been in Gautier all along, as if she hadn’t ascended from her status as ‘absent mother’ to ‘absent grandmother.’

Mercedes takes no small delight in seeing Amine recoil from his ‘present grandmother’ and her grabby hands, peering over the woman’s shoulder to babble his objections in Mercedes’s direction. He squirms out of her mother-in-law’s grip with enough force the aging woman has no choice but to let him. Amine takes a few stumbling steps before falling flat on his face. Before the Dowager can coo and rescue him from the carpet, Mercedes intervenes, helping him get to his feet just enough for him to stagger forth and topple into her lap. Amine is more baffled than injured, and spends the rest of the day and much of the next gazing at the Dowager, fixing her with a scrutinizing stare rather reminiscent of Mercedes’s own mother, and thoughtfully sucking on his thumb.

Sylvain, however, has more mixed feelings about Amine’s lackluster response to his own grandmother. “Here she is, babe! Here’s Grandmother!” he tries to cajole their son one afternoon when the Dowager enters the family sitting room. He waves at her to demonstrate, and when Amine only stares that politely puzzled, brown-eyed expression back—at his father, not his grandmother, Mercedes notices—Sylvain takes his hand and shows Amine how to wave: Sylvain in an armchair and slouching enough to make his mother purse her lips, Amine slouched in his lap with only slightly more dignity.

“Mab,” Amine says to Mercedes while he lets Sylvain wave his chubby hand around.

“’Mina,” Mercedes beams right back.

“Mnyeh,” Amine informs her, nestles his head into Sylvain’s neck, and promptly falls asleep, arm still in Sylvain’s grasp. This sufficiently distracts his father, who closes his own eyes, presses his hand to Amine’s silkier-by-the-day blond hair, and abandons any further attempt to hold conversation with anyone.

Mercedes still isn’t sure she quite forgives him for that, although it's better than the first few months where Sylvain would sweat each time their baby smiled at him; it means she's now left alone to feign polite conversation with her mother-in-law. Their already-souring relationship has not improved with time and distance. Absence, as it turns out, did not make the heart grow fonder. Once Sylvain and Amine rouse themselves enough to entertain the Dowager on their own, Mercedes doesn’t bother inventing a pretense. She leaves.

Mercedes is head of the house now.

“Amine isn’t in bed?”

It’s evening now. The head of the house had wound up baking old family pudding recipes, and the kitchen staff has just finished polishing them all off. Mercedes had accepted their no-longer-hesitant offer of sharing a drink, and—surprising but no one but herself—she’d wound up chatting and singing and playing games much longer than anticipated.

“No, milady,” the nursemaid says again, apology evident in her tone and wringing hands.

“But then he hasn’t eaten!”

“Oh—no, I mean, yes, milady,” the nursemaid stumbles over herself. She’s new, but Mercedes knows this only because the first time she’d changed Amine, her hands had trembled and her face had gone pale with fear while the squirming baby kicked about with wild abandon. “The girl before me, before my shift, I mean—she gave him his dinner in the sitting room. She and a boy from the kitchen staff.”

Now that the nursemaid mentions it, the bell _had_ rung while Mercedes had been two glasses in, and she recalls a boy scurrying off with a tray…

“The sitting room, you say?”

She hears voices when she approaches the family sitting room, and that alone stops her in her tracks like a wall of ice. In addition to the young lord and the Margrave’s dinner, the kitchen boy must have brought something along for the Dowager. Sylvain’s voice carries in earnest tones even through the crack between the double doors.

“—don’t get me wrong; I’m _really_ good at self-destructive behavior, you know? But this sacrifice isn’t—”

Against her better judgment, Mercedes presses her ear to the door, unkindly prepared to hear Sylvain be firm and stand his ground in the face of his mother’s wrath, something he’s done more and more as of late.

But she can’t hear the woman’s reply.

“Yeah? You really think so? Means a lot coming from you.”

She wonders what sort of expression her mother-in-law wears to give Sylvain that kind of feedback, to inject that excited note of hope into his sentences.

“Okay, well, if I’m being honest…I thought we’d be on the same page. Family’s family, you know? And I should’ve figured we’d agree, that these are idiotic letters from even more idiotic nobles. I know you’re as good as illiterate—” Mercedes muffles a coughed laugh “—well, I mean, I know you _are_. But I swear, once you _can_ read these things? You’re gonna laugh up a storm, ‘Mina.”

Mercedes’s lungs don’t finish their next breath, and Amine’s mismatched syllables and vowels jingle through the gap between the doors.

“Okay, maybe I _am_ being a jerk. No, wait, what would M-Mother say? She’d say _uncharitable_. I’m being _uncharitable_ , Mina-baby.”

Amine laughs hard while Mercedes cries in silence.

“Hey! Don’t laugh up a storm at _me_! Man, guess you really are like your mother, too. I’m idiotic, too—‘family’s family, Amine!’ Yeah. Kinda walked into that.”

Amine keeps laughing. Mercedes, trying and failing to wipe the constant stream of emotion from her eyes, hears the giggles break off into the contented hums their son makes when he’s petting Sylvain’s, or Mercedes’s, or Dulce’s, or Felix’s hair—not Annie’s, much to her disappointment.

“You sound like her when you laugh, ‘Mina. It…kind of freaks me out a…a little.”

Everyone’s quiet.

“But I like that about you. I like you.”

Mercedes holds her breath to keep the sighs, sobs, and tears at bay and keep the shaking smile on her face. She creeps away from the door and heads down the hall to their own bedroom. She doesn’t mention it to Sylvain in the morning.

* * *

Horsebow Moon, 1189

While it still prowls the corners of respectable taverns and the castles of disrespectful nobles, gossip about the Margrave’s son has quieted. It’s no longer interesting. It’s old news. Uninteresting. Irrelevant.

The _new_ and _interesting_ and _relevant_ gossip excites and shocks even the Margrave, actually, and certainly it does Mercedes.

“I didn’t even know the Archbishop had a _first_ kid!” The sentence shoots from Sylvain’s mouth like an arrow, or maybe like a particularly colorful oath.

“Neither did I,” Mercedes says, staring at the notice board next to the town square’s main orphanage. Children flock around it. While most of them can’t read—and likely never will—the colorful caricatures of the stony-faced Archbishop, his shadowy partner, and two very tiny copies of themselves—one a baby, one a toddler—make the news clear enough.

They both stagger home, like the information has slammed them with enough intoxication to last a week's worth of revels and feasts.

“ _Children_ ,” Mercedes repeats, like the ashen-faced Sylvain of all people has forgotten. “Plural! How wonderful for the two of them! But…none of our friends even told us! How could we not—”

Sylvain stares at his office door. Color returns to his face, but it returns too much; the back of his neck reddens when he rubs it, and a delicate pink flushes his cheeks. “Maybe I should…read my letters more often,” he admits.

“’Read your’—Sylvain!”

“Hey, we kind of had more _immediate_ problems to deal with,” Sylvain defends himself with the admittedly reasonable excuse. “Ingrid thought I was joking when I said we were gonna paper Amine’s bedroom wall with all the letters we got about him.”

Mercedes hopes he’s joking, too. Now that he’s said that, however, she’s not so confident.

A conversation for another day, she decides. “But a letter from the Archbishop!”

Sylvain shrugs his suddenly-tense shoulders. “Hey, I figured if it was _really_ important, he’d send a messenger. That’s what Dimitri and Ingrid usually do.”

Well, Mercedes can’t argue with that. Still, “Please do open the letters from the Archbishop in the future, Sylvain,” Mercedes says. “I know things are…complicated between you two—”

“ _Complicated_.”

She ignores his snort of disbelief. “—but we’ve had to deal with so many strained relations among important people, important nobles, as it is. Do we really want to make an enemy of the Church?”

“Mercedes, we’re not going to _make an enemy of the Church_ just because I didn’t send the Archbishop’s br—babies silver teething rings.” Mercedes has a good feeling she knows what word he’d omitted; a pang of old hurt lances through her. “Besides,” Sylvain says with one of his classic, insincere winks, “we have you. No one’d _ever_ make Mercedes von Martritz an enemy of the Church. Hell, Church should be more worried about making an enemy of _you_.”

She doesn’t want to argue.

She doesn’t want to talk.

But she doesn’t want to hear Sylvain call other people, other friends’ children… _brats_.

“I’ll send teething rings on both our behalf, then,” Mercedes says. “Not silver ones, like you said. Mithril might be nicer.”

* * *

Red Wolf Moon, 1189

Renewed interest in Amine’s ‘wellbeing’ returns with a vengeance shortly after his first birthday. No one in the territory—or maybe the entire Kingdom—seems to have forgotten stodgy, militaristic old House Gautier’s refusal to test their firstborn for a Crest after all.

“No one’s ever gonna forget when it's _your_ birthday party, huh?” Sylvain asks Amine only a week into the new moon. He pokes his belly, and Amine laughs. Sylvain keeps saying their child sounds like her, but Mercedes doesn’t hear it. She thinks he sounds like Sylvain, sounds the way Sylvain does when his laughter rings true.

She smiles and leaves her work to join them on her and Sylvain’s bed. She’s still cataloguing all the gifts, making inventories and balancing sums.

She hates it. Sylvain has offered to help multiple times—him with his head for numbers and strategies and memories—but Mercedes has refused each time. She thinks she might be one incorrect calculation away from conceding, but then he’d have to deal with all those letters _alone_.

“Was there ever any doubt?” Mercedes asks Sylvain now. She rakes her fingers through his hair, fingernails lightly scraping his scalp, and revels in the way he shivers.

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

Sylvain’s sentence comes out too flat, hard, and unsmiling, but he doesn’t appear to have noticed. Amine has, however; his sticky grin has faded and the probing, brown-eyed stare he so frequently adopts is back. Sylvain just strokes his hair away from his face, wordless, so Mercedes does the same to his own red locks.

There’s a memory here, one Sylvain won’t divulge. She admits she’s curious—Sylvain’s birthday this past year, the first she’d attended with his family, was a raucous affair, and she’d been led to believe “people get _really_ into celebrating my birthday.” But, like so many things, now doesn’t seem to be the time to ask.

 _You’re just afraid_ , that steadily-louder, steadily-sterner not-so-little voice reminds her.

“Anyway,” Sylvain says, startling her from her half-formed thoughts, “at least there’s some variety this year. People remember there’s a _Lady Gautier_ , too. Asking after _her_ 'health.'”

His tone’s light and dismissive and cheerful. Mercedes is glad he’s still playing with the cuddle-loving Amine while he talks. He won’t have to see her face pale with chilling memories, or maybe turn green with nausea.

“Even getting a few letters with people who aren’t…well, I wouldn’t say they’re _supportive_ , exactly,” Sylvain continues. He twists around just slowly enough for Mercedes to fix her features into an appropriate grin that matches his. “But they’re _intrigued_. I knew not…testing our kid, not our…” Sylvain swallows before he can try numbering anything more than one _kid_ , “We knew it’d be a whole…’statement,’ even if we didn’t mean for it to be. But…I guess it’s been long enough some people think it could be an even _bigger_ one. If enough people were interested, wanted to talk about, I don’t know, alternatives, or…”

Mercedes doesn’t know what to say, even though Sylvain’s paused like he’s expecting a response. “Well,” he starts to say, _light and dismissive and cheerful_ , and Mercedes shakes herself back into normalcy.

“That's good to hear. I’m proud of you.”

 _You have more support than you know_ , Mercedes doesn’t say, because if she tells him the truth, she’ll need to tell herself the truth, too.

Sylvain pokes Amine’s nose, who complains with a high-pitched, “Oh, _come_ now,” the only sentence and words he’s able to squish together in some semblance of ‘coherence.’

Mercedes resumes stroking his hair. “You’re going to tease me,” she says, leaping upon the silence as a means of topic change. “But I have something to ask you.”

“I won’t tease you.” The smile in Sylvain’s voice will prove him a liar, Mercedes just knows it.

“Can you…can you help me with the inventories? And the…the cataloguing, the…I’ll handle the letters! I don’t mind at all! I, I, the numbers, you were _right_ , is that what I should say—”

Sylvain, who has tilted his head back enough to plant a kiss on her chin, performs a masterful and successful attempt to shut her up. He taps her freshly-kissed jaw, and she lowers her head to let his lips slide over hers properly. Again and again and again.

She loves him.

“Good to hear. I’m proud of you, too,” Sylvain says. The smile in his voice proves him the most honest man alive.

* * *

Guardian Moon, 1192

Talk of Crests and support and alternatives and hopes grind to a halt when even the least important nobles in Gautier territory learn the Margravine is expecting a second child.

Talk of Crests and support and alternatives and hopes flood the halls of Castle Gautier while the Dowager emerges from her bitter, lonely quarters to flutter in the bright winter air like an escaped, ecstatic moth; while Sylvain apologizes too much for ‘not knowing what to do, I thought I was better, I thought I could _handle_ this again' and cries because he's still crying; while Mercedes assures him there’s nothing wrong with his mind or emotions and tries to, tries to, _tries_ to tell him there’s something wrong with her mind and emotions instead; while Amine Relle Gautier, age three, soon to begin Faerghus-style swordsmanship, learns how to pronounce the word ‘Sreng’ without a lisp.


	11. Blue Sea Moon 1192 - Harpstring Moon 1194

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello after far too long! I hope you all are safe! Welcome to the second arc!
> 
> If you don't already, follow me on twitter: [NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites). You can keep up with my absurd tweets and occasional teases of WIPs.

Mercedes and Sylvain should have expected the upper-class citizens of Gautier would make another fuss when their ruling House chooses not to test their second child for a Crest, either. Perhaps it’s been too long since Amine’s own scandal. The gossip is less open, but that’s maybe not as comforting as it could be.

It was easier this time for the two of them: a simple, official letter to the King and Queen informing them of the latest addition to House Gautier’s genealogical records with a brief personal note that they once again wouldn’t require any visit from Crest scholars was all it took. Dimitri and Ingrid’s recordkeepers replied with a simple, official letter acknowledging the birth, and Dimitri and Ingrid’s handwriting replied with lengthy personal notes expressing their excitement to meet their daughter someday soon.

“How old’s Prince Armel?” Sylvain asks her the moment he finishes reading the letter. There’s an odd calmness to the casual question that Mercedes quickly identifies as growing panic.

“A bit older than Amine,” she reminds him.

“Yeah, okay,” Sylvain says. “Nice. Great!”

He does not sound like he thinks it’s nice or great. Mercedes switches the baby to her other breast. Solaina rises and falls with her mother’s sigh but remains cheerful and oblivious.

“Of course Their Royal Majesties want to meet her,” Mercedes says. “They’re our friends.”

“Right, right, I know, I’m not _that_ messed up,” Sylvain hurries to reassure her. “I’m really not,” he says again, but it’s more to himself this time. Slowly, slowly, Mercedes is starting to believe him.

Sylvain had wasted no time bursting into silent tears when the healers had announced the baby was a girl. He’d waited until they’d left the room to break down in full. And oh, sweet Goddess, it had _hurt_ until he crawled onto the freshly-changed sheets and curled his body around the two of them, muffling his sobs into Mercedes’s hair. Maybe holding her of his own accord had made his hands shake more than they had with Amine, but he did start reaching for her sooner, too.

Unfortunately, Solaina has grown horribly needy for his attention now, and Sylvain is terrible at leaving her in the nursery for too long. Their people already whisper about the Margrave’s softness, especially compared to the military hero his father has been. Mercedes wonders what they’d make of him if they could see the way he looks while sleeping on the nursery couch, Solaina wide-awake and comfortable on his chest.

It is very dangerous to hold a baby while the baby-holder is asleep. The nurses now have explicit permission to shoo their noble employer out of the nursery, as well as orders to check more frequently if he’s sneaked in to wring his hands over her cradle at odd hours of the night.

As the months go on, thank the Goddess, Sylvain calms down. To Amine’s delight, he takes it upon himself to train more than he has been, scheduling his routine around Amine’s lessons. To Amine’s frustration, sometimes he adds his own lessons, too.

Mercedes attends these lessons sometimes, Solaina in her arms. She hasn’t trained at all since the war and certainly not since having two babies. Her body’s unfamiliar to her now but she finds it…comforting, in a way, to know this is proof of peace and proof of love.

She does feel exhausted watching her son and husband train so vigorously, however. She doesn’t envy them.

Today, Sylvain has Amine beginning his studies in anti-Srengi counterattacks. “I was four, too,” is all Sylvain shrugs when Mercedes expresses her surprise. “It’s normal. Felix, Glenn, Dimitri, Ingrid, and her brothers all started sword-fighting when they were four, too.”

One man’s name is conspicuously missing from the list, and it’s so obvious that Mercedes hears the name ‘Miklan’ ringing in her ears as surely as if Sylvain had spoken it aloud.

“I hate it,” Amine huffs when Sylvain delicately flicks his son’s training sword out of his hands with a wavy Srengi-style sword of his own. “Stop doing that!”

“You gotta block, pal,” Sylvain says. This does not placate Amine. He balls his empty hands in tight little fists.

“You won’t let me!”

“I didn’t train enough at your age, either,” Sylvain says, and if he hoped Amine would read that as commiseration, his hopes are dashed. Tears well up in Amine’s brown eyes.

“I am! I am training! I hate this!”

Sylvain freezes. Mercedes, sitting on a bench bouncing an indifferent Solaina in her arms, wonders if she should intervene.

Amine is seconds away from a rare tantrum. She’s been the one to deal with them so far, and she…hasn’t had a wonderful success rate. Amine is usually unflappable. It is hard to re-unflap him.

“Uh,” Sylvain says, rubbing the back of his head with his free hand. Mercedes begins to rise, wondering if hugging Amine with his new sibling blocking the way will ruin any attempt at comfort. But Sylvain stares at his free hand, back at the sword, and tosses it aside. Amine, startled by the noise, shuts up.

Sylvain flops down in the dust. “Yeah,” he admits. “I hate it, too.” He opens his arms, Amine rushes into them, and Sylvain shushes him while his son bursts into quiet sobs against his shirt.

Mercedes’s eyes water, too. But as much as the sight warms her heart, she can’t help think about the whispers in those viperous noble households. The ones who call Sylvain weak. The ones who see the trade routes too close to the Srengi border get attacked by rogue bands of rumored Srengi soldiers from the last—and only—campaign. The ones who don’t care that Sylvain goes to deal with them himself, because he refuses to declare open war on Sreng, and doesn’t that make Gautier territory look weak? The Kingdom? The _King_?

Mercedes doesn’t _want_ him to go to war with Sreng. But she doesn’t want those foolish, heartless people to say such things of a man who seeks peace after so long living life in constant war.

“I wanna learn magic,” Amine hiccups now. Sylvain rubs his back in silence. “I wanna learn magic,” Amine says again. “I don’t like this.”

Mercedes does not know how to explain to her four-year-old son he can hardly focus on Seteth’s fable books despite the many lovely illustrations that accompany them, much less a magical theory textbook. Hilda would be horribly offended to learn Amine didn’t appreciate them, and it’s good she’s still too busy traveling the world to find out or receive frequent letters.

“Amine, you barely pay attention reading your fables.” Sylvain does not have nearly so much tact. Mercedes tenses, and Solaina offers her sleepy complaints.

“I can pay attention,” Amine insists with all the impatient lies a child can promise. Sylvain catches Mercedes’s gaze, eyes pleading over the top of Amine’s little blond head. In the intervening silence, Amine adds pitifully, “Dulce’s learning magic too!”

Alas, this is true. Mercedes knows Annie wouldn’t have settled for anything less, but…

“We’ll talk about it later,” Mercedes says. Amine yanks himself out of Sylvain’s embrace, tear tracks drying on his rosy cheeks, and tries to launch himself into Mercedes’s arms. He’s so happy, in fact, he doesn’t even lose his unflappability when she pulls back just in time and scolds him for forgetting she is holding a _baby_.

* * *

It takes some time, but Amine proves her wrong, and Mercedes has never been more proud of her son. Healing especially just seems to come naturally to him: he’ll watch her demonstrate on her own arm only two or three times before he can seal the tiny pinprick she forces herself to give his thumb. Mercedes wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to bear the Crest of Lamine, and oh, wouldn’t _that_ be a scandal itself? But if he does, it does not manifest in a single one of their practical lessons together, or with the tutor she selects for him.

Does he fidget and stare out the window when she reads her old white magic textbooks to him? Certainly. Mercedes understands, too. She felt much the same way when she had to read them at the Royal School of Sorcery.

“You also were an adult,” Sylvain reminds her, not even bothering to pretend he doesn’t find her teaching methods hilarious. “Those aren’t, you know, really kid-friendly books.”

“Well, you find something more appropriate, then,” Mercedes huffs. She flops on the bed and cross her arms. The bed creaks and her nightgown flutters as Sylvain joins her. He smooths her hair back from where it’s haphazard and loose on her cheeks. She closes her eyes.

“You angry?”

“No.”

“Because you sound kind of angry.”

Mercedes opens her eyes in a flash. Sylvain still strokes her hair away from her face, but the grin on his face doesn’t quite fit the tender, confident gesture. “I’m just embarrassed,” she says. There. That’s truthful enough. Because she’s not angry, really, but…she does wish he wouldn’t tease her about this.

Sylvain always did so _well_ in school. Even without trying. Didn’t he remember how hard it was for her?

She wouldn’t remind him of her shame, then.

“Hey, it’ll be fine,” Sylvain says, the grin growing more natural. “Amine’s smart. Both of us graduated the Officers Academy, right? I mean,” he corrects himself, “sure, it was a little, you know, canceled, but—”

A smile of her own grows on Mercedes’s lips. “Oh, dear. I don’t think we ever finished our studies. We’re terrible role models!”

Sylvain presses a messy kiss on her forehead. She giggles. “That’s us! Garreg Mach dropouts!”

“Oh, don’t say that,” she chides him. Sylvain ignores her and kisses her nose, then each of her cheeks. Her eyelids slip shut.

“Such _delinquents_ ,” he breathes just above her mouth. “Think we’ll get punished?”

Mercedes waits for the kiss, but it doesn’t come. He’s expecting an answer. _How frustrating_. “I can’t think of anyone who _would_ punish us,” she grants him.

Sylvain runs his hands down her sides and presses leisurely kisses along the line of her jaw. Mercedes tilts up her chin, and he obeys the unspoken demand, licking his way down her neck. “I don’t know,” he whispers into the dip of her throat between her collarbones. “Heard you failed your autumn riding exam. Did you get _punished_ for that?”

She cannot for the life of her remember if this is true, even without Sylvain gently suckling pink marks along her neck and shoulders. It probably is. She never had the grace to stay upright on an unsteady saddle—

Sylvain nips at _that_ spot on her neck, and she yelps even as she feels her thighs grow slick. “Come on, share with the rest of the class,” he says.

It’s so ridiculous, the logic so inconsistent, and Mercedes doesn’t even care. She moans when his fingers slide up from caressing her hip to her nightgown bodice, fingers unlacing it with easy familiarity.

“What? That didn’t sound like an answer.”

“Sylvain,” Mercedes complains, but her tone comes out too similar to a moan when his fingernails graze a nipple.

“Oh, man. You don’t even wanna admit it.” Sylvain sits up, caressing her bare breasts now, an insufferable smirk on his lips that he _still_ hasn’t properly kissed her with. “You really are a delinquent.”

She laughs. “So are you. Look at you, scolding me when _you_ failed your winter exam. On _purpose_.”

Apparently, he had told her with glee shortly after, he’d left the whole thing blank. Mercedes had caught a peek when the Professor had handed them back, however, to learn Sylvain had lied. He’d drawn the Crest of Flames in place of every answer. The Professor’s blank expression had revealed nothing, but the cruel smugness in Sylvain’s relaxed posture had revealed everything.

But the barb doesn’t stick now. Sylvain tosses off his shirt while Mercedes wriggles out of her nightgown. He tsks at what he’d probably call her _eagerness_ and leans over her again. “Guess I did,” he whispers above her mouth. Mercedes sits up, and the frustrating man leans _back_ , admiring her naked body and refusing to kiss it. Again. He’s cruel and smug and relaxed and it reveals everything. “You gonna punish me, too?” Sylvain’s voice drops an octave deeper and Mercedes wants him, she _wants_ him, and he says, “Or you gonna show me how good you are at riding now?”

When Sylvain finally, finally kisses her, Mercedes can hardly reciprocate because she’s laughing too hard.

That week, she gives up on the silly, complicated books. Amine’s progress improves faster than ever, full of excitement to apply his spells to everything now. And while Mercedes has found him trying to ‘heal’ broken dolls and crushed flowers several times, the shape of a Crest of Lamine never shows its form during his lessons, nor one of Gautier in his continued, less-dreaded weapon training.

* * *

Solaina has just begun to walk when Amine declares the injustice apparent in their tutelage.

“She growed so fast,” Amine says somberly at dinner.

“Grew,” his grandmother corrects him. Amine nods, like she’s said something very wise.

“Yeah. Grewed so fast.”

“Doesn’t mean she’s ready to hold a sword,” Sylvain says. Mercedes can see the corners of his lips twitching. A servant ladles soup into his bowl, and her back blocks the sight from Amine’s view.

“She is,” Amine insists. “It’s not fair that _I_ gotta—”

“Don’t disrespect your parents, child,” his grandmother frowns, and Amine shrinks back into his chair. Mercedes hates that the woman has this effect on her son, despite her best efforts. She opens her mouth to snap something undignified, but Sylvain beats her to it, albeit less impulsively or rudely.

“Sorry, Mother, but I _definitely_ wanna hear this,” he says. “Okay, Amine. Why do you think your _baby sister’s_ able to start swinging an axe?”

Amine does not pick up on the taunt, for which Mercedes is grateful. She should speak with Sylvain about how frequently he lapses into the tone of his voice with which he _still_ uses on—Queen!—Ingrid. No, their son answers honestly: “Not an axe! She took my sword yesterday.”

Mercedes’s hand freezes as she reaches for her wine. “She took your _sword_?”

Amine’s eyes widen at the sharp tone in her voice. “N-no, no! My _toy_ sword. My present! My present from His Highness!” He looks back and forth between his mother and his grandmother with equal terror, then turns to his father for sympathy. “She drooled all over my pommel!”

Sylvain’s face is slowly purpling with his poor effort to restrain his laughter. “Good point. Her drool’s a weapon on its own.”

“Sylvain,” his mother hisses, but this piques Amine’s interest.

“Oh! Can I fight with drool, too? Can my lesson—”

“No, Mina,” Mercedes says. “Your lessons are just fine as they are.” He slumps in his chair but offers no further arguments.

Sylvain’s still struggling to stay serious and her mother-in-law’s lip is curling, so it falls on Mercedes to offer some semblance of support.

“Your training is going very well these days,” she encourages him. “I do love watching your improvement every day! I’m so proud of just how disciplined you’ve become.”

“Yes, listen to your mother,” her mother-in-law agrees. Mercedes turns to her in surprise only to find she’s not looking at her grandson, but instead straight at her _son_. “The heir certainly must be ready to defend the ladies of the house at a moment’s notice.”

Sylvain, however, doesn’t seem to sense his mother’s accusing stare, because _he’s_ looking at Mercedes with enough unabashed fondness her cheeks color. “I think the lady of the house can defend herself just fine,” he tells her.

Mercedes laughs to hide her embarrassment in front of his mother. “Oh, I hope I still have it in me,” she says airily. “I’ve hardly trained at all since the war ended!”

“As well you shouldn’t.” Her mother-in-law’s voice cuts through their pocket of peace like a knife through butter. “You’ve no need for such activities now that you’re mother to nobility. Besides,” she continues when Mercedes is too shocked by her sudden rudeness to reply, “it’s easier to keep warm in Gautier winters after carrying even _one_ child inside you, isn’t it? Then again,” and now the woman _smiles_ , malice glistening on her teeth, “you’ve always found _pleasure_ in the cold, haven’t you, Mercedes?”

The dining room grows still, silent, and frozen like an iced-over battlefield. Even confused Amine stays quiet, like the sudden hostility is a physical thing weighing down their table.

Unfamiliar _fury_ roars to life within Mercedes’s chest, sparking as quickly as flint on tinder.

This _woman_ …

This woman said such a thing in front of their _child_.

“I…you…” Words have never floated out of her head so quickly before. But the fury remains, no, grows…

While Mercedes gathers herself, her mother-in-law, pleased to have stunned everyone into enraged silence, says over a spoonful of soup, “Besides, as my _son_ rightly pointed out, you are lady of House Gautier. You should worry about your children more.”

 _Words_. Mercedes grabs them almost out of the air. “You’re right. I _am_ lady of House Gautier,” she tells that insufferable woman with all the cool dignity she can muster in front of poor, frightened Amine. “And I _do_ have my children to worry about. Perhaps I’ll take up archery again, darling,” she says to Sylvain now, sweet as cream and sugar and knowing just how sour her mother-in-law’s expression must become by contrast. “I did have quite the knack for it in school, remember?”

If Sylvain remembers, he doesn’t say so. If he hears her at all, he doesn’t say it. No, he ignores her completely and stares his mother down with all the confidence of a lord, all the rage of an injured animal. “I’ll have one of the maids escort you to your rooms,” he bites out. “The Dowager’s clearly not feeling well.”

No one moves. His mother doesn’t even flinch.

Sylvain flicks his eyes to the unfortunate servant closest to him, the one who had last served him his now-cold soup. “Sorry, did you hear me? Not feeling so great either, pal?”

That does it. The servant practically jumps, then bows. It would be a silly little mockery of a dance if there were anything remotely humorous about the situation. As far as Mercedes is aware, no one has ever heard the heir—no, the _Margrave_ —speak to his own mother this way.

“Y-yes, right away, Margrave.” She scurries to the Dowager’s chair and begins to pull it out. “Your Ladyship—”

“Get away from me,” Sylvain’s mother snaps, waving her hand so near to the servant’s face it’s dangerously close to slapping her cheek. “Sylvain, how long will you be so irresponsible? You have a duty to your people, to the _Kingdom_. A duty to your family—”

“Just doing my duty as heir, you know? Just taking care of the _ladies of the house_ ,” Sylvain says. His voice is so calm and airy it sends chills down Mercedes’s spine.

She’s never heard him like this, either.

Sylvain doesn’t bother with more words. He waves at the servant, who tugs the chair again with enough fear Mercedes wonders how long the poor woman has served the Gautier family. But his mother-in-law values nothing if not propriety. She’s broken it once before. She rises painfully slowly from her chair, ignores the servant’s hesitant offered arm, and walks to her chambers with the servant scurrying after her.

The last two dinner courses pass swiftly and in silence.

Mercedes kisses Amine goodnight. He hesitates when he looks up at Sylvain, but the veneer of icy fury on Sylvain’s face melts just a little. He bends down to wish Amine goodnight, too.

But that anger is back when he and Mercedes are back in their room.

“What was _that_ about?” he snaps. He unbuttons his shirt, and their harsh clatter snaps in the room, too, an echo of his accusation.

“I don’t know,” Mercedes says, barely managing to ask him the same question. “She just—”

“No,” he cuts her off. He throws the shirt in his laundry basket, messier than usual, and works on his pants next. “No, how does she _know_? Why does she—what was that, that _winter_ thing? _Pleasure in the cold_ ,” he quotes, disgust dripping from each syllable.

“I—”

_"Three days before the attack, your son poured himself a brandy from a bottle he'd left on the balcony, downed the entire glass save one block of ice, and licked it inside of me until it melted. Because I asked him to."_

Oh, why must her memory serve her _well_ for once?

“I…must have mentioned something to her. Once.”

“Wh—” Sylvain’s fingers still over his trouser laces. For a moment, Mercedes thinks he’s shut up completely. She can feel her face growing hot. With shame? Mortification? The _thought_ of it, that memory, that beautiful, brandy-filled night—

“What the _fuck_?” Sylvain whispers, putting his head in his hands, and her selfish hope is dashed. “What the—Mercedes, why would you tell her _anything_ like that? My _mother_?”

 _Because you weren’t there_ , Mercedes doesn’t cry out. _Because I never had to deal with her on my own. Because I was frightened and alone and you were_ gone _, Sylvain, you never_ could _defend me from her_.

“I didn’t mean to,” she says instead. “It…it slipped out. During a…discussion.”

“During a _discussion_.”

Her face is on fire. “Doesn’t she—this hardly can’t be odd for you, can it?” Mercedes babbles. She doesn’t see the tension in Sylvain’s jaw tighten more and more. “She must have known about some of your—your other girls, your—”

“My ‘girls?’” Sylvain laughs, head thrown back to let the sound resonate. “Wow. Okay. Yeah. My _girls_. Is that how you—you don’t _feel_ that way, do you? One of my _girls_ —”

Maybe, in another mood, Mercedes might look for, even find, the agony and terror in his voice when he says that. But now, all she can hear is the frantic pounding rush of her pulse racing through her veins, heart, and head. “It’s what you did!” she continues heedlessly, stupidly. “It—you’re not like that, not anymore, I know, but you _were_ —”

“No, I am,” Sylvain cuts her off. Amusement laces each dark word in his sentences. “I’m exactly the same. Everyone knows everything about me, right? Even my mother. Never could have just one part of my life to myself, huh?”

“You’re just angry with me; you _know_ that’s not true.”

“ _You_ don’t seem to think so.”

And that awful, pointed, untrue _jab_ at her last weak shred of defense shatters her. “You were _gone_ , Sylvain!” Mercedes whispers as loudly as if she’d screamed. She covers her face with her hands so she can hide her tears. So she doesn’t have to look at his expression. “You were at war. I was alone. I didn’t know what to do when she—she started saying things, things about me, my body, its _purpose_ , I…You weren’t _there_. You were in Sreng and I was with her and I was _alone_ with her.”

Sylvain doesn’t reply, _thank the Goddess and each Saint_. Mercedes tries to stop the furious tears, succeeding only in wiping a clear new path for fresh tears to trickle down.

“I know it’s…not fair of me,” she tries to apologize without really apologizing.

“It’s really not.”

“I know you didn’t want to fight in another war,” she tries again.

“Yeah. I didn’t.”

When Mercedes dares to look up, she wishes she hadn’t. Sylvain’s turned towards the washroom, like he’d been waiting for her to say something and hadn’t heard it. Like he’d been waiting for something more than excuses.

“I’m gonna get dressed,” he mutters when she stays silent. The washroom door clicks softly behind him. He doesn’t slam it shut.

Sylvain’s anger has always been soft in its danger. Mercedes thinks of the Crest of Flames sketched over and over on schoolbook parchment and sits on their couch behind her dressing screen to stop feeling so ashamed.

It _was_ unfair of her to say such a thing to his mother those years ago. But she’d known that even then.

It was also true, however, she’d had no idea what else to do. And has no idea what she’d do _differently_ if she could.

Sylvain was never able to meet her mother, Mercedes thinks about too often. She thinks—knows her mother would have adored him. Her mother was swayed by pretty, charming words so easily, much more so than her daughter. She never had learned, not even after they’d fled House Bartels, and had let Mercedes’s adoptive father swoop in on her with all his pretty, convincing arguments for mother and daughter’s future happiness.

But Mercedes would have wanted for Mother to swoon at Sylvain’s flattery and ridiculous lines, to love the man who loved her only remaining child.

She wishes her own children could have another grandmother.

She wishes her mother could have been there through her pregnancies.

She wishes her mother could have been there through Sylvain’s panic.

She wishes she could show Sylvain how similar the two of them were.

But it’s too late for all of that now.

Mercedes’s final tears dry up on her cheeks with that last thought.

No.

No, it’s _not_ too late.

She can still _tell_ Sylvain. She can tell him what he thinks he already knows. The things she omitted during school, when a playboy pretended he wanted to be her friend and she pretended to believe him, only to learn he’d been honest with his intentions far sooner than she had.

When she apologizes—which she _must_ , she refuses to fall asleep knowing she hasn’t—it won’t be the time to justify her actions. But that time _will_ come soon. She swears it.

Mercedes can’t see the washroom door from here, but she does hear it open, as if Sylvain has heard her resolve harden after this hour of reflection.

“Mercedes?”

His voice is soft. Uncertain.

“I’m—I’m behind the screen.” Her voice is croaky and horrible. She nearly trips over herself trying to scrabble off the couch, but Sylvain is faster than her and catches her.

“Hey.”

His hair is still wet. Mercedes lets him steady her. “Hello.”

Sylvain swallows and releases her, and while he moves away, he doesn’t go too far. “I…”

“I’m sorry,” Mercedes says all in a rush. “I’m so sorry I broke your trust and…told your mother personal things, private things without your knowledge. And I’m sorry I said such things to you. It was cruel of me. And Sylvain, you…please, I _must_ have you know how untrue any of it is. I didn’t mean for any of it to…to sound like it did, and my insensitivity makes it even more—”

“Mercedes,” Sylvain cuts her off. “I get it. Thanks.”

But she wants him to _know_.

Whatever face she’s making right now must warn him of her intentions to keep apologizing, because he places a gentle finger on the seam of her lips and smiles.

Sylvain looks so much older now, for some reason, than she remembers.

“I’m really not worth giving all those ‘sorries,’ okay?”

Mercedes inhales sharply, and her teeth grazes the tip of his finger. He pulls away.

“You are,” she tells him. That terrible, sad smile lingers on his face. “You _are_ , Sylvain. Please, please know that.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

He’s humoring her.

He pulls away more— _no, no_ —and turns towards the bed.

“You’re worth everything I could possibly give you,” Mercedes says.

Sylvain stops in his tracks.

“Everything and _more_ ,” she insists.

Each muscle in his jaw twitches. Mercedes doesn’t know if he’s trying to speak or trying not to cry.

“I don’t want you to give me anything,” he says after only a few seconds. “I don’t want to…take anything from you at all.”

Mercedes has no idea what to make of that. But his smile, if sad, seems real enough.

She’s always been able to tell when it’s real.

“I’m sorry,” he says now. “I said some shitty things to you, too. I didn’t mean ‘em, either, but they weren’t okay anyway. So…”

Mercedes swallows around her relief. “Thank you.”

She doesn’t know who reaches for each other first. What she does know is they’re holding each other. Awkward angles, awkward heights, awkward feelings, and so, so tightly.

“Mercedes,” Sylvain whispers just above her ear, “I’d rather fight in another fucking war than fight with _you_.”

Mercedes coughs a pathetic laugh. “Let’s avoid both.”

She doesn’t usually fall for his pretty lines. But this time, that one works.

* * *

Mercedes picks up a training bow the very next morning. She picks it up every morning after. She even _trains_ with it every morning after, and some afternoons during Solaina’s nap.

Amine is _delighted_ to have his mother on the field with him now, too. “Stop showing off for your mother,” his swordmaster keeps scolding him whenever Amine tries to pull a fancy stunt he hasn’t mastered on a training dummy, least of all his instructor.

Sylvain finds the idea of Amine ‘showing off for a lady’ hysterical, whether or not it’s his mother. For her part, Mercedes thinks the idea of a four-year-old having any concept of needing to impress a ‘lady’ is ridiculous. It’s an odd thing for Sylvain to keep saying once she teases him, however, because he now seems ashamed when it slips out.

“Old habits die hard,” is all he says when she asks him about it.

Indeed they do for her, too, albeit in much more positive ways. It doesn’t take long for Mercedes to fall back into archery. Yes, the first month and a half leave her sore enough she can’t hoist up her much-offended toddler most days. Yes, waiting for the calluses to resurface on her fingers is a painful process.

But Amine’s whoops of excitement every time she drives three arrows into the same place on a target remind her of her reasons for doing this. For protecting her children, her home. A little bit—a lot—of spite for her more and more reclusive mother-in-law, yes. Maybe a _little_ because of Sylvain’s blatant pleasure at touching her shoulders now: “It drove me _crazy_ in school, you know. Almost as much as your breasts that day you didn’t button your uniform. You were probably breaking a million school rules to wear that scarf over all _that_ , you know? Impeding our _education_.”

And if nothing else, Mercedes herself is satisfied with her improvement.

“You’re slouching,” a flat voice behind her informs her one afternoon, and Mercedes’s next shot goes flying beyond its mark. She whirls around, bow held in front of her like a useless shield.

Shamir Nevrand leans against the open training room door. “Nice shot.”

“Oh! You startled me!” Mercedes gasps needlessly. Sure enough, the ghost of a smirk flits over Shamir’s lips. “Ah, I mean…it’s so good to see you, Shamir!”

“Likewise.” Shamir watches her fiddle with her bow some more and sighs. “Don’t let me interrupt you. You always were a scattered one in class.”

Mercedes flushes. “R-right.” She turns back to the quiver standing upright in its rack beside her. “Ah…are you not acting as the Archbishop’s bodyguard today?”

She has just remembered Sylvain had official business with him. Sylvain has mentioned it several times over the past week—“Not with _me_ , but with _Gautier_ ”—and it still had slipped her mind. Archery is the one thing she can focus on constantly these days—

“I was in the war room with them until they finished. I let some of our other bodyguards handle things for now.”

It’s very hard to focus when Mercedes’s toughest former professor is scrutinizing her form. Shamir isn’t much older than her, but her expertise with the bow has always made Mercedes feel small by comparison. Not many people at Garreg Mach could manage that.

“Ah. Why’s that?” Mercedes asks to be polite. She nocks another arrow.

“Eh, figured I’d catch up with you. Been a while.”

Mercedes drops the arrow in her surprise, and Shamir’s sigh sounds like she’s been holding it in ever since she entered. “That’s very nice of you Sha—”

“Calm down. Now you’re too stiff. Here.”

Shamir steps closer and begins rearranging Mercedes’s arms.

“I—I know, I’m just out of practice,” Mercedes defends herself uselessly.

“You seemed to be doing just fine before you knew I was here,” Shamir notes. She taps Mercedes’s arms as they grow slack again. “Come on. Just pretend like you’re in school. I didn’t mean to spook you _that_ badly.”

“You ‘spooked’ me in school, too,” Mercedes laughs, but the joke—well, Shamir’s version of a joke, anyway—helps. Shamir steps back and watches her in silence for several minutes.

“Your form’s certainly improved,” she says once the beading sweat on Mercedes’s forehead begins to roll down her cheeks.

“Thank you!” Mercedes beams, flushed now with pride, and immediately misses her next shot. This time, she sighs in unison with Shamir.

“I really was out of practice,” she admits, nocking another arrow. Her muscles are beginning to tire, and Solaina will be waking from her nap soon. “I’ve only returned to training regularly the last few moons.”

“Strange for the Margravine, isn’t it?” Shamir raises a brow.

Mercedes can’t help snort at _that_. “Not at all,” she says too breezily. “It seems I’m breaking tradition by even stepping foot in this place.” The bowstring _twangs_ but this next arrow hits its mark. Not a flawless shot by any means, but it’s something.

She can almost feel the waves of curiosity rolling off Shamir’s shoulders, but she doesn’t elaborate, and Shamir doesn’t ask. She undoubtedly has ways of finding out on her own, if she _really_ is curious.

“Well, you always were a quick study,” Shamir finally says, returning to the subject, and before Mercedes can express surprise at yet another compliment, Shamir pitches her voice a little louder and calls, “Stop hiding, Diya. I hear you.”

Shamir is superhuman. Mercedes hasn’t heard _anyone_.

When she turns around, a dark-haired boy around Amine’s age is peeking around the open doorway. He says nothing, only observes the two of them in silence.

Perhaps they should station more guards around the training room. Mercedes hopes she remembers to bring it up to the captain later.

“Come on. Introduce yourself.”

The child enters the training room obediently. “I’m Diya,” he tells Mercedes.

“Hello, Diya,” Mercedes smiles at him. “I’m Mercedes, the Margravine Gautier.”

Diya nods so slowly, so somberly that Mercedes has the strange feeling the information has been stored away in his mind to analyze later. “It’s nice to meet you,” he says.

“You as well, Diya.”

“Don’t hide from people in the castle,” Shamir tells him. “This isn’t the monastery.”

“Okay. Sorry.” Diya hesitates, then glances at the training rack. He fixes his unflinching gaze _so_ very much like the Archbishop’s back on Mercedes’s face and asks, “May I please train with one of the swords?”

“For a boy as polite as you?” Mercedes has had enough training of her own today, anyway. “Of course you may.”

Diya looks ready to leap over to the sword rack, but Shamir cuts him off immediately. “No, we need to leave soon. Byleth and Sylvain are done by now, remember?”

It is very odd to hear the Archbishop’s name uttered so casually in public, even by his own wife. Sylvain’s name less so, but sometimes Mercedes forgets the Archbishop has a proper name at all.

“Thank you, Margravine Gautier,” Diya sighs. He shoves his hands in his pockets and waits for Mercedes and Shamir to put away the quiver and targets.

“Your sister?” Shamir asks as the three of them file out.

“Playing with Amine,” Diya replies. Goddess, his feet hardly make a sound on the echoing stone floor. “I got bored. They were playing hide and seek.”

“Great,” Shamir mumbles. “ _I’m_ going to have to be the one to look for her, I guess.”

“You’ve never brought your children here before,” Mercedes says to fill the time as they head towards the reception hall. “I’m looking forward to meeting your daughter for the first time.”

“Hmph. Figured it was time they saw the world more. You might not meet her today if she has her way, though,” Shamir snorts.

“Zayn really likes hide and seek,” Diya explains to Mercedes. “She’s really good at sneaking up on people.”

 _More than_ this _child_?

“I see,” Mercedes forces a smile. “That’s a very valuable skill, isn’t it?”

Amine, who always finds the cleverest places to hide in this huge castle whenever he wants to avoid his lessons, will likely be difficult to track down, too. Sylvain’s success rate in dragging him to train is much higher than hers. Mercedes covers her mouth to stifle a laugh at the thought of the unlikely duo of Sylvain and Shamir scrambling all over the castle for their sneaking children. A glance out of the corner of her eye reveals Shamir’s doing the same thing, even as she tries to retain some expression of parental annoyance. Diya reaches for her hand, heedless of that falsely-stern face, and Shamir takes it without a second look.

How odd a thing it is, to see even her most intimidating professor relax when around her children.

As it turns out, Shamir and Sylvain’s future as paired-up hunters does not come to pass, at least not today. A girl the spitting image of the Archbishop if he had waist-long hair leans against the Archbishop himself, appearing quite comfortable even pressed against the armored regalia he wears. Sylvain too looks comfortable talking with the Archbishop, but the way he ignores the girl completely makes Mercedes frown.

“Hello, Your Grace,” Mercedes says, and the two men jump. She laughs. “Oh! I didn’t mean to be sneaky, but… Oh, I did it too, Shamir!”

She’s never heard Shamir laugh before. It’s a pleasant sound.

“Good to see you, Margravine,” the Archbishop says. “This is Zayn, our daughter.”

Zayn peels away from her father’s side. “Hello, Margravine,” she says. Goodness, but aren’t these some serious children.

“Hello, Zayn. Wonderful to make your acquaintance.” Mercedes subtly glances at both Shamir and the Archbishop’s calm, neutral expressions and decides she really can’t be surprised. She turns to Sylvain instead. “Isn’t Amine here, too?”

“He ran off,” Sylvain says, stretching and tucking his head behind his hands. “Said he had to give something to Zayn before she left.”

 _Ah_. That’s the reason for his rudeness. The same exact way he hovered over Prince Armel when they’d brought Solaina to court for the first time. Mercedes sighs and wonders if they need to talk _again_ about this silliness. It’s never been funny, and she wonders if it’s going to get worse.

“That’s very kind of him,” she says in a firm voice.

“Mhm.”

Mercedes decides to change the subject. “Did you two have a productive day?” she asks the Archbishop. The Archbishop quirks a little grin, and as always, the sight feels unfamiliar but pleasant. Just like Shamir’s laugh, come to think.

“I believe so,” the Archbishop says. “Sylvain has good ideas about dealing with Sreng. But we need to find a reasonable tactic to implement them.” He raises his eyebrows at Sylvain, and in a tone that _clearly_ says this day was spent in debate on the topic adds, “Let us know the moment you need covert agents. You know it would be useful to have inside—”

“It’ll look _really_ bad if Sreng finds them before I can even _think_ about a treaty.”

“They won’t _find_ —”

“Byleth,” Shamir cuts in, and it’s so funny how quickly the Archbishop snaps his mouth shut. “You know better than to discuss these things out in the open.”

It’s funnier still to hear yet again his name dropped so casually, ‘out in the open,’ without a modicum of courtly respect.

“Right,” Sylvain says. The Archbishop sighs before echoing the sentiment.

“You’re correct. Sorry.”

And it is the funniest thing to happen all day when a loud, distinctly not-sneaky rumble of Amine-sized footsteps clatter down the main stairs. “Zayn!” he shouts, a little out of breath. “I couldn’t find a real one ‘cause I really love all the ones I have, but here, I drew one for you. Here.” He thrusts a crumpled-up piece of parchment into Zayn’s expectant hands. A hastily-scrawled dagger has been drawn on the ink-smeared page. “It’s a Faerghus tradition to give your friends before a journey,” he tells her solemnly. “Thank you for playing with me today.”

“No, thank _you_ ,” Zayn says just as seriously.

Sylvain shoves his face in his hands in full view of everyone. “Four _fucking_ Saints,” he mumbles loud enough for Mercedes to hear, and _certainly_ loud enough for Shamir when he adds,“I’m going to murder the prince, I swear.”


	12. Verdant Moon -  Wyvern Moon 1194

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, now that we've finally made it to the arc that made me wanna write a sequel at all, it's comin' faster, baby! Thank you for sticking with me!

“ _Fuck_! Thank—thank fuck, I—” Mercedes shifts, and whatever Sylvain was going to say is cut off by another shameless moan. He’s always so much more vocal when she’s the one inside him, and she _loves_ it. Loves it more than she wants to admit to him, maybe.

“Now who’s being rude and loud?” she shushes him, silencing him by placing her mouth over his. Less kiss and more Sylvain gasping laughter against her lips; he doesn’t even offer a witty retort.

“Needed this,” he mumbles, “ _needed_ you—”

Mercedes runs her fingers up and down his muscled thighs. They tremble with each brush of her skin on his. “You did, did you?” She grinds into him, one long, slow roll, and Sylvain arches his spine straight off the mattress. He hisses something incomprehensible and tries to meet her slow, careful, cruel thrusts, tilting his hips in a silent, searching plea.

Mercedes bends down—Sylvain practically sobs—and traps his wrists in her own hands, straight up above his head. Away from where they’d been gripping his damp hair like a lifeline. Away from how she’d seen them twitch, that telling sign he can never hide that belays how he’s about to grab her waist and slam her into him harder.

He’s so _desperate_ like this. Needy, like he’d said. Mercedes nips just below his ear at the spot that makes him keen. It works, but not as effectively as she wishes. He can still speak.

“Mercedes, _please_ , stop it,” he begs, wriggling underneath her.

“Stop?” she smiles against his jaw, trailing kisses down his neck, slowly withdrawing her hips from where they’ve been steadily picking up speed against his.

Sylvain breaks out of her grip like a terrified prisoner and yes, there are his hands, his arms wrapped around her waist. “No, _please_ , you know what I meant, come on, I’ve—I’ve needed this _all_ day.”

Mercedes leans back and pretends to consider, twisting into him a little with leisurely, doubtlessly torturous circles of her hips. She’s blushing from the praise, but the nighttime hides it. “All day, hm?” Before Sylvain can even open his mouth, she pushes into him _hard_ , fast, right to where he’s been frantically guiding her, and Sylvain’s violent swear echoes in the monastery guest bedroom. And then she’s back to slow and cruel, Sylvain babbling prayers while she talks. “You were thinking about me all day?” He nods, helpless. “Doing this to you?”

“ _Yes_.”

“Even thinking—” she thrusts again and she’s not imagining his tears glistening in the moonlight, “even thinking about me in the war room, with everyone around you, with the Ar—”

“Please, Goddess, don’t talk about _him_ while you’re inside me,” Sylvain bites out through the beautiful color of his laughter. He throws his freed arm over his eyes but makes no other attempt to get her moving again. Surrendering, accepting however she wants to please him.

He’d do anything for her, and silly as it is, Mercedes knows this is one of the truest ways he can show it. How he thanks her over and over and over when she lifts his legs up, pulls him farther into her lap. How he can chant her name when she finally takes pity on him—and the heat coiling between her own thighs, in all honesty—and speeds up.

This is Sylvain, and sincerity can taste unfamiliar on his tongue.

This is Sylvain, and truth can taste _delicious_ on his body.

“Fuck, _fuck_ , I’m—more, just a little—”

Mercedes is close, too, but past the point of words. She bends over him again and captures his silent scream in her mouth, they’re almost—

“ _Bad dream I had a bad dream wanna go home I_ —”

The door slams open and slams shut almost in sync with Solaina’s rapid, terrified sobs. Mercedes and Sylvain, still under the covers _by the grace of the Goddess_ , freeze on top of each other.

“Solaina, darling,” Mercedes says as evenly as a woman can while being seven inches deep into her husband, “take a calm breath and go back to bed.”

“No, no! I _can’t_!” Solaina’s high-pitched voice moves closer. Sylvain stiffens even more. Mercedes mouths a silent ‘I’m going to pull out,’ and he gives a shaky nod. She grips her strap by the base and slowly, slowly—oh, how ironic—slips out. Sylvain bites his fist to silence a moan anyway, although he’s gone soft in a matter of seconds.

Mercedes rolls off him and tosses the covers even higher over the two of them. Just in time, too: Solaina, teary-eyed and thumb shoved in her mouth, has approached Mercedes’s side of the bed. “Mama,” she whimpers. Her daughter’s sniffles and pain tugs at that maternal instinct inside her that has, frankly, always been there, well before she’d ever thought about motherhood. But Mercedes is _still_ wearing her harness and strap, and even if Sylvain weren’t composing himself next to her, that seems reason enough not to invite Solaina to crawl onto the mattress to be consoled.

Well, that, and the fact that Annie warned the two of them about how frequently they give in to Solaina’s pleas for attention at all hours of the night: “She’ll _never_ leave you alone!” Their two-year-old had raised enough of a fuss when she was weaned; the transition to “no, you can no longer climb into our bed whenever you please” has also been a trying one.

“What was your dream about?” Mercedes asks, all gentleness and delicacy. Sparkling tears spilling down Solaina’s cheeks sparkle brighter as more join their trail. She shakes her head. “You don’t want to share?”

“Too scary,” she says. Her thumb pops out of her mouth so she can point it at the bed. “Up?” she asks hopefully.

“ _Not_ up,” Sylvain cuts in before Mercedes can. Solaina’s lower lip trembles, but it’s not like he can see. “Laney, it wasn’t real. You’re safe. Okay?”

“ _Not_ okay,” Solaina insists with his same inflection. She edges closer, testing them, seeing if they were lying and don’t mean it each and every time her parents say _you cannot join us in bed and we will continue saying this_. Mercedes tucks the covers around her tighter, blocking Solaina’s ascent.

“Dreams aren’t real, babe,” Sylvain speaks up again. Well, at least he’s recovered nicely. Mercedes, meanwhile, is stuck defending their sweat-drenched fortress from a stubborn toddler all on her own.

“This was!” Solaina’s tear-choked complaints rapidly rise into despairing wails. “This was real!”

Sylvain heaves the longest sigh in the world. It’s a wonder that he has any air left in his lungs to say, “Do you need me to tuck you in?”

The words have a positively magical effect. Solaina’s eyes dry up in seconds, a smile splits her chubby face in two, and she skitters over to Sylvain’s side of the bed. “Yes, _ple-e-e-ase_!”

Hands shoved against his face, Sylvain mumbles something probably unsavory for a moment. It almost sounds like a prayer, if prayers were laced with expletives. “I needa get some pants or something,” he whispers to Mercedes while Solaina bounces impatiently to the side. “I am _not_ getting caught with my dick out by Shamir or someone.”

_Or someone_.

Mercedes nods and carefully, subtly slips from the covers. Solaina, distracted by the promise of her father bringing her back to bed, doesn’t give her mother a second glance as she fumbles about for Sylvain’s long-discarded dressing robe. Her harness, which had previously made her feel powerful and beautiful, now makes her feel awkward and stupid. She’s never crawled into bed faster in her life, and it’s not even for an enjoyable reason.

“Here,” she whispers, shoving the robe in Sylvain’s face as he fends off Solaina’s babbling advances. He tucks it around himself under the covers and, once he deems himself decent, rolls off the bed, too.

“Come on, Laney,” he sighs. “Let’s go scare those bad dreams away.”

Solaina reaches for his hand when they head out, but Sylvain masterfully dodges with practiced ease from his loveless years before fatherhood. It would almost make Mercedes’s heart clench had she not been so relieved by his tact. Instead, he uses that threatened hand to shove the door open and sweep an extravagant bow to hurry Solaina along. She scurries past, unaware Sylvain now needs to retie the sash from how hastily he’d tossed the robe over his body. He winces only a _little_ when he leaves the room, legs only a _little_ unsteady.

The door clicks shut, and Mercedes bursts into laughter.

This isn’t the first time such embarrassing interruptions have occurred while she and Sylvain make love. Nor is this the first child to have done so. Felix, of all people, was the one to complain to her about it. Dulce had been a docile, sleepy baby who had apparently spent most nights in her infancy crying like the world was ending. Now, she’s an energetic firecracker of a girl who spends most nights bursting into her parents’ bedroom with a toy sword and adventure in mind.

“Annette says I can’t complain,” Felix had grumbled to her over a few too many cups of wine. There’s absolutely no way he would have told her otherwise, Mercedes thinks. Then again, she doubts he ever would have complained to Sylvain about such a thing, either. And he _definitely_ wouldn’t complain to her if he knew just how much Annie’s shared with her best friend, anyway. “She says _I’m_ a bad influence. I’m not a bad influence. Am I?”

“I’m sure you’re not,” Mercedes had hurried to reassure him, and it seemed to have worked. She’d thought it funny at the time, to see how self-conscious a father Felix could be even as he pulled combat stunts with his daughter Annie—and Mercedes—declared unsafe for a six-year-old.

Now she’s certain she and Sylvain—well, _mostly_ Sylvain—have been bad influences by enabling such clinginess with their second-born. But Sylvain had been present for the entirety of this pregnancy, and he’d been terrified the whole nine months. He’d treated Mercedes like glass each day, then transferred that coddling directly to their baby the second she took her first lungful of air.

The door creaks open again. Mercedes checks to make sure it really is Sylvain’s mop of red hair poking through before she decides to unclasp her harness. She’s…really not up for anything more tonight. Sylvain throws himself onto the mattress and groans his frustration into his pillow.

“This is the _third time_ since we came here.”

Mercedes reaches over to card her fingers through his hair. “Mhm.”

“I have no idea what to do.”

“Neither do I.”

“Think she’ll just…stop pulling this crap? Like on her own?”

Mercedes snuggles closer with a sigh. Sylvain throws his arm over her waist to pull her closer but makes no further, more sensual attempt. “Oh, I wouldn’t think so, no.” Sylvain mumbles something into his pillow, and she strains to hear. “What was that?” He rolls on his side to face her and traces a line from her temple down her cheek to her jaw.

“I said, we really gotta get her more independent.” He falls silent while he strokes gentle patterns along the curves and angles of her face. “She dreamed we were gone. That I was gone,” he corrects himself. “It really freaked her out.”

It ‘freaks out’ Mercedes, too, to consider such a thing. But she’s an adult. She understands what it means to bear the title ‘margrave.’ And what it means to go to war.

“I don’t know what scares her so much about the monastery,” she says instead. She feels Sylvain shrug against the mattress.

“Probably just unfamiliar. Like I said…independent.” The corners of his downturned lips twitch a little. “Hey. Remember what our sex life was like before we had kids ruining it? Because I sure don’t.”

It stings.

But Sylvain’s smile when he doesn’t let her reply soothes the hurt right away. “To be fair, our sex life was what _got_ us the kids, so I guess it was pretty good, huh? Nice job, sweetheart.”

Mercedes burrows her face into his chest to hide her own smile. She doesn’t think it works. “Nice job,” she whispers into his skin. Sylvain starts petting her head, lulling her into sleep, too.

* * *

"It was a _joke_ ,” Sylvain says to Shamir over and over every day that passes at the monastery, but it falls on deaf ears each time. Probably for the best; it wouldn’t do for the captain of the Knights of Seiros to let the young Prince get ‘murdered’ by the Margrave Gautier because she believed an assassination threat to be nothing more than a joke.

This explanation falls on deaf ears, too when Mercedes tries to explain it to Sylvain. “You can’t joke about _murdering the crown prince_ , darling,” she says, referring to when Sylvain had said such a thing about their own son picking up Armel’s—Dimitri’s—‘embarrassing habits.’

She does try to talk some sense into Shamir too, but only gets some sort of meaningful _look_ for her trouble, like Shamir knows something she doesn’t. “I’ve noticed your husband’s got a different sense of humor than mine does,” is all she says, which only confuses Mercedes more. She decides not to ask the Archbishop for clarification.

The predictable outcome, then, results in Sylvain acquiring many new shadows, particularly when Prince Armel is nearby. And the prince is often nearby: although he’s just passed his eighth birthday, he’s often side by side with his father in the cardinal’s room, listening to the Archbishop and Sylvain argue about Sreng while Marianne and Mercedes stand to the side. He’s more attentive than Dimitri sometimes: Dimitri, who has left Ingrid and their premature, newborn daughter back in Fhirdiad, and keeps letting his visible eye glaze over with worry whenever the Archbishop and Sylvain bark circles around each other for one too many hours.

It tires Mercedes out too. At least she has the luxury of attending those war meetings whenever she has the energy and spending her time strolling about the monastery when she does not. Everyone present—even little Prince Armel—is more qualified to give their opinion than her, and it’s silly to test their already-frayed nerves.

“Look. I give this to you.” Solaina holds out a wilted stalk of lavender in her chubby fist, and Mercedes accepts it with a grateful smile. Solaina beams, mouth gummy and half-full of teeth, and clambers up the two steps to join her mother. Mercedes has perched herself just before her old room at the monastery to embroider in the sweet summer sunshine. It’s mostly out of habit; the guest rooms are on the third floor.

Plus, Sylvain likes finding her here. He says it makes him feel young to kiss her hand outside her room, gives him a chance to “win you over properly, like I should have back then.” It’s sweet, in that Sylvain-style definition of ‘sweetness’ in the heated seconds before his voice drops low and dark, making dreamy, belated promises of _exactly what they would have done_ inside her room as students.

“Father back now?” Solaina asks, poking inquisitively at Mercedes’s sewing kit. Mercedes swoops the sharp needles and teething-tempting thimbles out of the way and lets Solaina dig through the brightest threads.

“Not yet, Laney,” Mercedes says for the third time in fifteen minutes.

Solaina sniffles—the third time in fifteen minutes—and Mercedes rubs her back with her knuckles until the threat of sobs dissipates. She’s lucky she can embroider one-handed to keep herself entertained while all her friends snap at each other in the cardinal’s room. Perhaps, it occurs to her now, a better use of her time would be learning Srengi, make use of the beginner language books Amine’s been enjoying in his lessons. Perhaps it would be even wiser to practice while Solaina gets this clingy; they both can learn together, and Solaina is still young enough to grasp language easily—

“Boo.”

Mercedes sets her embroidery ablaze, shoves Solaina behind her, and whirls around, flames spasming on her fingertips, to see Zayn backed against the wall, eyes wide. “Goodness!” Mercedes gasps, tears pricking the corners of her eyes, “Zayn, you—you must _never_ sneak up on people so!”

“I—I’m sorry,” the Archbishop’s daughter stammers, uncharacteristically rattled. “I—I didn’t know you—you could cast magic, I didn’t—”

“Found you,” Amine pipes up as he rounds the corner. He taps Zayn on the shoulder, nary a care for her nor his mother’s horror, and grins. “You’re it.” Zayn makes no indication to give chase, and he sighs. “Why didn’t you think Mother knows magic? I know magic.”

Solaina pushes herself to her feet and latches onto his leg, babbling about Zayn and Mother being _scary_ and _too scary_ and similar words. Amine pats her strawberry blonde head absent-mindedly. Zayn, to Mercedes’s surprise, flushes and mumbles something.

“Beg your pardon?” Mercedes asks, eyebrows pinched and practically shooting into her hairline. She has a terrible feeling she knows the answer.

“You…you’re not always with…my parents. And His Majesty. And His Highness. And Margravine Edmund. And Margrave—I thought you were just Mina’s mother,” Zayn does indeed say, and yes, Mercedes knew it, but it still sends something brutal and nauseating lancing through her.

“I am Mina’s mother,” she says. She sets her embroidery aside, willing her hands and voice steady. “But I am also Margravine Gautier.”

Zayn nods, utterly miserable and mortified. But she can’t possibly be more so than Mercedes herself.

She attends every meeting after that.

* * *

“Maybe you’ve forgotten, Archbishop…you may not be the ‘Ashen Demon’ anymore, but _I’m_ still the _Margrave Gautier_. You do know that’s a _military title_ in nobility, right?”

Dimitri must have heard the sneer in Sylvain’s voice, even if he hasn’t seen it, right? Mercedes darts a nervous glance at her liege only to find him…paying less attention than her on her most scattered of days. He grinds the jewel of his wedding ring into the callused palm of his other hand over and over while the Archbishop and Sylvain engage in another of their… _spats_.

“Ah, how could I forget,” the Archbishop pretends to muse, all cold disdain in the face of Sylvain’s simmering anger, “when the Margrave Gautier himself reminds me each time I ask him to give me some concrete strategy.”

“Let’s all get along,” Mercedes ventures. “Margravine Edmund is also a—”

Marianne shoots her frantic, pleading look across the table, and Mercedes shuts up. It doesn’t matter; no one appears to have heard her other than the newly-ascended Margravine Edmund, apparently. Shamir and her guards keep still as statues in the shadows. Dimitri keeps chewing his lip and glancing at the door like an express messenger will burst in from the capital at any moment. The Archbishop and Sylvain keep bickering.

“Okay, _Archbishop_. I’m into roleplay. You be the _Professor_ , and I’ll be the schoolboy.”

“I’m interested now. Will you allow me to demonstr—”

“No, no, you asked me to give you something concrete! Look: trade caravans along the land border get attacked the most. Right? I’ve shown you those incident reports a thousand times now. Of the fifteen confirmed Srengi attacks—”

“No, _seventeen_ if you count the—”

“Fine, fine, _seventeen_ confirmed Srengi attacks, fourteen of those caravans had tried to use the mountain pass to Fraldarius instead of their approved trade route. That’s contested territory. The rest of the year’s attacks were regular bandit raids. Of course Sreng would object! If they let merchants travel just because they’re civilians, they risk us thinking they’re totally fine with us marching troops through that same route. It makes _sense_. It’s not reason enough for a preemptive strike.”

“I’ll play along. Good marks for diplomatic policy, but bad marks for military defense—”

“You didn’t even _teach_ shit like that—”

“—and worse marks for governance. Your grieving subjects won’t underst—”

Sylvain slams his hand on the map. The resulting booming echo from the wooden table underneath rumbles throughout the war room. “ _You_ don’t understand,” he growls. Mercedes gasps. No one hears her. “You have _no_ idea what it means to be a noble, to be _born_ with responsibility.”

Mercedes wants to tell the Archbishop to drop his smile, faint as it is. He doesn’t, of course, and says, still smirking, “More than you think.”

Sylvain recoils. Mercedes tries to get Dimitri’s attention, tries to get the _King’s_ attention, because it’s really not her place to tell everyone to calm down _again_. But Dimitri just rubs at his temples and doesn’t even pretend to pay attention. Why should he, anyway? This is more a matter between Gautier and the Church; Edmund is only involved because their sea trade routes have been affected by Srengi raids—

Sylvain throws back his head and laughs, all howl and teeth. His smile glints in the torchlight like poison on a blade. “Well, aren’t you just a spoiled little Saint,” he whispers, its stark contrast to his laughter positively strident.

“I believe it’s time for a recess,” Mercedes cuts in, forcing authority into the words. Her fingertips tremble when no one reacts. She jerks her arms above the table, rises, and claps loudly enough to make the torch flames flicker. “Shall we all take some tea, maybe take a walk in the fresh air, and reconvene in a half hour? If His Majesty agrees,” she adds, smiling sweetly when Dimitri jolts to his senses.

“Yes, a recess,” he rolls the words out, like they taste foreign on his tongue. “I…Yes, I think we could all benefit from clearing our heads.” He shakes himself, gets to his feet, and leaves the room, his retinue hopping to attention behind him.

The Archbishop is next to leave, because he must be. Protocol demands it. But he takes his time pushing himself away from the map, shrugging on his elaborate, unfamiliar cloak, and peeling away from Sylvain’s glare while Shamir and her guard fall into step beside him. He doesn’t give Sylvain another look.

Mercedes’s heart sinks when Sylvain waits hardly a moment before taking off, too, sparing her a curt nod and fleeing down the opposite hall. She hopes he’ll go to the training grounds for a bit, work off that odd…tension, assertiveness that seems to ferment whenever he’s placed in a room with the Archbishop. She hasn’t seen them interact much since the war, and certainly not so much as now. Has this aggression always been there? More than blank, failed tests and overextended jousting lessons?

Mercedes wonders if Shamir really does know something she doesn’t.

“Would you…like to go to the chapel together?” Marianne’s voice pulls her from her musings. Mercedes manages not to jump this time, but Marianne’s awkward smile scares her almost as much. “Maybe the Goddess has more insight than us.”

She relaxes, and Marianne’s crooked smile does, too. “Yes. Maybe she does.”

* * *

“It would have been nice to pray with Dedue,” Mercedes says wistfully as they wrap up their prayers. “I hope the gods of Duscur know I miss them.”

She can’t see Marianne’s face, because the other woman is pushing the door open, but the warmth in her voice matches the welcoming sunshine when she says, “I’m certain they do.”

They leave the little chapel of Saint Cethleann behind and head for the Academy courtyard. “I’m surprised not to see him,” Mercedes ventures when Marianne doesn’t volunteer any more information. “I would have thought he’d be here with Dimitri. And you,” she adds when Marianne tucks a loose curl behind her ear almost bashfully.

“O-oh, no,” she hurries to say. “It’s just—no, he’s in Gaspard most of the time now. With Ashe.”

A Major Crest of Blaiddyd glows through the windows of the empty Blue Lions classroom, an enormous wooden _crack_ resounds, and the courtyard drops to the sort of utter silence brought about when two children have just made an egregious error of some sort. As the sound of scolding servants reaches her ears, Mercedes decides she doesn’t want to know and hopes for the first time Amine hasn’t been playing with the Prince. Marianne seems to agree; they both quicken their pace and turn into the monastery.

“You must miss them terribly,” Mercedes says. Marianne nods, but the smile she bestows upon Mercedes sends a rush of…well, _heat_ through her.

She always forgets Sylvain was the one who taught Marianne how to smile.

“He and Ashe adopted a child. A teenager,” she says.

“Oh, how marvelous!”

“Yes,” Marianne says, letting Mercedes into the stairwell first. “His name is Yen. I’m very fond of him,” she says, the affectionate words almost lost in the dusty quiet of the stairs.

“When in the world did this happen? I can’t believe I didn’t know! You must forgive me, Marianne; if I’d known, I would have…have…”

What would an appropriate celebratory gift have been, she wonders? Would it be rude to offer a gift now, late as it is?

It’s too quiet behind her, Mercedes now realizes. They reach the top of the stairs, and Marianne’s expression has grown stiff. “They…Yen’s birth father was from Duscur,” she whispers, like it’s a secret. And when she says, “Ashe and Dedue are concerned about…bringing him to court. For Yen’s comfort, for, ah, the sentiment of the, um,” Mercedes understands now it _is_ a secret, almost. And her heart breaks for this unmet child.

Neither of them wish to mention Ingrid, even if there were not a hundred royal guards milling about. To be fair, Ingrid _has_ been a staunch supporter of Duscur reparation efforts ever since Dimitri and Dedue began in earnest. But Mercedes knows what the public sees is not always the same as what goes on in the heart, and even should Ingrid devote the rest of her life learning about and loving a country whose very people she once detested merely for daring to exist while people she loved no longer did…

Mercedes wouldn’t want anyone to speak to _her_ child the way Ingrid once did to Dedue. She understands Ashe and Dedue’s trepidation. What with the Tragedy of Duscur so long ago in public memory, this generation is far more hostile towards former Imperial subjects. But there are those of Mercedes’s generation who still remember. Who still hurt. She wonders if she’ll live to see hostility towards Sreng fade, too.

“Yen is Ashe’s heir, of course,” Marianne says while they trudge reluctantly back through the second floor halls, “and now that I’m margravine, I can name him heir to House Edmund too, if the three of them would be happy with that. But…”

“I’m sure they would be,” Mercedes says, and Marianne gives her another one of those _smiles_ that Mercedes wishes would stop making her blush. “You’re a very good friend to Sylvain. And to me,” she says when Marianne raises a curious brow. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“I’m glad, too,” a new voice drawls down a corridor. Marianne and Mercedes spin in unison to find Linhardt trailing away, not even looking at them. “Good to see you both,” he says with a half-raised wave.

“Come now, Linhardt,” Mercedes chides him. She lifts her hem enough to scurry after him and pretends she doesn’t hear his long-suffering sigh. She places her hands on his bony shoulders and beams at him. Her smile falters. “Oh, look at you! You’re so…ah, thin.”

“’Gaunt,’ Mercedes. The word you’re looking for is ‘gaunt.’” Linhardt taps her shoulderblades precisely two times in an imitation of a hug when he accepts she won’t stop plucking disapprovingly at his cloak. “I’m well enough; never you fear.”

“Have you…not been sleeping enough?” Marianne asks. Mercedes silently commends her; she _never_ would have asked Linhardt such a thing herself.

“I never sleep enough,” Linhardt does indeed yawn. “But this time I’m sleeping even less. I’m on the verge of a breakthrough. Who’d want to _sleep_ when being awake holds so much more excitement?” The tiniest spark of joy flickers behind his shadowed eyes.

“I never thought I’d hear you of all people say that,” Mercedes laughs. “Is that why you’re here at the monastery? Crest research?”

“What other reason would I have?”

She politely declines from pointing out he is technically still Count Hevring and both the Archbishop _and_ King are currently in the building.

“I did miss this place, you know,” Linhardt sighs. He tucks an enormous book Mercedes hadn’t noticed against his chest and hugs it. “Not just for all the…fishing ponds and lush, shady trees. I can never stop to research _properly_ , what with the way we’re all on the move every other moon, it seems…Positively exhausting, I tell you.” He yawns midway through the sentence, like even the memory of travel is enough to tire him out. With Linhardt, it usually is.

“’All’ of you?” Mercedes asks. Linhardt offers her a single, silent, long blink. “Do you mean Caspar and Hilda?”

“But of course. Who else would I mean?” Linhardt’s eyes slide closed. Mercedes frowns.

“I…I don’t know.”

Neither of them seem to know what to do with the new pocket of silence. Marianne does, however: “Is Hilda with you now, then?” she asks. She clasps her hands like she’s back in the chapel. “Did…are you staying here together? All of you?”

“No, just me. Yes, me, myself and I, all on my lonesome. Thank the _Goddess_. Finally have some peace and…quiet…” Linhardt nods off again, but this time it’s almost…dramatic. Mercedes can’t place why. She isn’t sure whether she should laugh or ask him more about his recent life, but Linhardt makes the decision for her by shaking himself awake and declaring, “Well, big breakthrough incoming, like I said. I’ve got research to conduct, and you two presumably have…things to do, so—”

Marianne gasps at the same instant Mercedes squeals, “We’re _late_!”

They skitter back to the cardinal room with the sound of Linhardt’s relieved “Farewell, I suppose” bouncing off their backs as they run.

* * *

The Archbishop and Sylvain are already arguing when Marianne and Mercedes scurry through the doors. Dimitri seems more engaged, thank the Goddess, but Mercedes has a feeling it’s only a matter of a time before he gives in to staring at the doors again.

“Tensions are high enough whenever I have to go fend off independent battalions with the Relic. I’m not going to show up with the Knights of Seiros the next time. Think Sreng needs _another_ reminder who the Goddess favors?”

“Yes. I do. It’s not just Gautier at this point; it’s the whole _Kingdom_ , Sylvain.”

“Oh, is Gautier making the Kingdom look bad? Or am I just making the Church look bad?”

“ _You’re_ not, it’s—”

The doors Dimitri has been staring at slam open, and the guards step aside to allow an express messenger to burst through. “Milord,” he gasps, then adds, “Your Majesty, Your Excellency, mil—”

“What’s wrong? Is it the Queen?” Dimitri interrupts him, launching himself out of his chair to loom over the messenger. But the man hardly cowers. He just stares straight at Sylvain and swallows.

“Margrave Gautier, Sreng has issued an official declaration of war. They have commandeered—”

Sylvain snatches the sealed missive from the messenger’s hands while ice pools in Mercedes’s stomach.

“What—what happened?” she asks. “What did they do? Ah—report, please.”

“Two large Srengi armies followed two separate trade caravans through the mountain pass,” the messenger rattles off. Sylvain rips through the wax and starts reading, greedy eyes flitting line by line on the vellum. “Once each caravan arrived at their destinations, castle towns still within Gautier, the armies sounded war horns and invaded. Castle Angevin and its town have been razed. Macuille is under Srengi control. Scouts report troop movements coming south. This is all the information I have since Duke Fraldarius sent me here a week ago.”

Sylvain swears and folds the letter—presumably from Felix—with a tidy precision belaying his fear. “This news is a week old?”

“I came as fast as I could, Margrave.”

“I know, I know.” Sylvain squeezes his eyes shut. “Well, seems you had a point after all, Professor. _Archbishop_.”

The Archbishop doesn’t rise to the bait, but coming from Sylvain, it…almost sounds like an apology. To Mercedes’s ears, at least.

“Well, off I go to clean this up,” Sylvain brightens enough to hurt. “I really made a mess of things this time, didn’t I?”

Before Mercedes can offer hollow reassurances, Marianne’s clear and strong voice declares, “I’ll go home, too. If someone could hire a…another express messenger to Edmund and have troops ready to march by the time I arrive, we can set sail—”

“No, Marianne,” Sylvain interrupts her, quick as a shiv. “You’re not sacrificing your soldiers for a _Gautier_ problem.”

Marianne’s lip trembles, but she squares her shoulders and keeps her head high. “They’ve been harassing my sea routes, too. This could very well become an Edmund problem.”

“You’re _not_ sending your soldiers to die on Gautier’s behalf,” Sylvain snaps, and the quiet room grows quieter. “You’re not. It’s not _your_ home, Marianne, I’m _not_ going to let you—”

“The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus is my home!” Marianne cries, and Sylvain shuts up. Mercedes watches Marianne ball her fists like she’s watching an opera happen onstage, watching the world play out a life people like Mercedes can only observe, not affect. “It _is_ my home now,” Marianne repeats, calmer now. “All the people I care about, who…who care about _me_ are here. And,” she says, louder now that Sylvain doesn’t seem likely to interrupt again, “as you rightfully keep pointing out, you are Margrave _Gautier_. And I am Margravine _Edmund_. And Gautier has no say in where Edmund troops do or do not go to protect their home. Edmund offers its aid, Margrave Gautier. Please…please accept it. You don’t need to go to war alone.”

Mercedes almost doesn’t hear Sylvain’s embarrassed laugh, his familiar smooth recoveries and charming, false apologies over the sound of her pounding pulse.

_I’ll be alone_ , she doesn’t say. _Your family will be alone while you’re at war_.

* * *

Sylvain’s favorite black horse paws the cobblestones on the bridge out of the monastery, saddled with its war armor and Sylvain’s hastily-packed gear. Sylvain himself hasn’t mounted it yet, but his fingers tug loosely on the bridle, like if he lets go, he’ll decide not to ride to Sreng after all, to stay with his family, to drop the Lance of Ruin and never pick it up again.

“I can,” Amine insists, tears flowing freely from his eyes. “I’ve been—I can hold a real lance, I can do it now—”

“Mina, please,” Sylvain begs, and the wretched emotion tearing itself from his voice makes Mercedes want to cover her ears. Not Amine, though. He only speaks louder, faster.

“Is this my fault? Is it ‘cause I don’t have a Crest? Didn’t I train—I’ll train harder! Father, I’ll train harder, I can, I can come with, I _can_ —”

“Mina, hush,” Mercedes says, and that’s enough for Amine to stop talking and start sobbing instead.

Sylvain gets to his knees, jerky and stiff with emotion—not with age, never with age, he’s _actually_ been training lately, hasn’t he?—and folds Amine into his embrace. Amine, who doesn’t care that his tears and spit and snot streak his father’s uncomfortable armor. “You’re such a good fighter now,” Sylvain says, “and that’s why I need you here, to protect everyone who’s _not_ as good a fighter. Like your sister. Right?”

Solaina, meanwhile, has been observing the emotional exchange with wide eyes, a thumb in her mouth, and confusion written all over her face that’s sure to shatter the second Sylvain rides away.

“She shoulda learned to fight,” Amine wails. “Like I said.”

Mercedes doesn’t like the tactic Sylvain’s employed. She doesn’t want Amine ever thinking he can take on a grown soldier because his father told him he can. But now is not the time to contradict him, she doesn’t think.

“You and Mother will protect her, right?”

“Mother will protect you both,” Mercedes corrects him, relieved. Amine nods and pulls himself away from his father. Sylvain’s embrace is the one that lingers. He scoops up Solaina next, giving her a big, wet kiss on her cheek. She giggles and pats her hands all over his face.

“Protect me too!” she squeaks, poking Sylvain’s face and pressing a kiss on his nose with an exaggerated, Sylvain-inspired ‘ _mwah_ ’ sound. Sylvain’s pained smile softens.

“Yeah. That’s what I’m doing, babe.”

Amine and Solaina move to the side to let their mother say goodbye next, Amine holding tight to his sister like she’s a security blanket. Mercedes cups Sylvain’s face in her hands, smoothing her thumbs over his cheekbones. He closes his eyes, lashes trembling.

“I’m here,” she whispers against his lips. He nods. “I’m here to protect you, too. Remember? Whatever you need, _whenever_ you need me, I—”

Sylvain tangles his fingers into her hair and slams his mouth on hers. The leather of his gloves pulls the windswept locks of her hair against her scalp, tight and painful, and Mercedes leans into the sensation. She licks his bottom lip, then again even as he tries to slip his tongue in her mouth, and he lets her plunge her own between his parted lips so she can remember the taste of him—just for a scant few moons, the same short time he was gone when last he’d been truly at war.

“You must come back to us,” she reminds him when she lets him breathe. Sylvain gasps anyway, nodding his promises. Mercedes tugs him forward into a hug and squeezes him as tightly as Amine is probably still squeezing Solaina.

Sylvain shoves himself out of her grasp after too many and not enough seconds. He mounts his horse, offers his family a falsely cheery salute, and with nothing more than a kick to his horse’s sides, he and the small Gautier battalion leave for home. For Sreng. Without the three fair-headed people standing at the gates to Garreg Mach.

It only takes fifteen minutes for the last Gautier flag to fade out of sight.

“Father back now?” Solaina asks, staring at the same empty point in the distance as her mother and brother. Amine chokes and takes off running back to the market. Mercedes prepares to race after him when she sees him buried in Prince Armel’s arms, Zayn awkwardly standing to the side with too much sympathy in her gaze.

“No, not yet, Laney,” Mercedes murmurs.

“Up?”

She slings her daughter into her arms without another word. Spoiling her a bit, maybe, but Mercedes can’t…she can’t…

“I’m still Margravine Gautier,” she tells the battalion’s retreating backs, threatens them, whispers the promise. “You’re not going to war alone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got a few people saying they actually wanted to know Solaina's middle name--I'm sorry, I figured people wouldn't care so I left it unmentioned! As babies are introduced, I'll let you know their full names if they aren't already stated elsewhere. But as a refresher...
> 
> Amine Relle Gautier, Sylvain & Mercedes's oldest  
> Solaina Flavie Gautier, Sylvain & Mercedes's daughter
> 
> Dulce Cassia Fraldarius, Felix & Annette's daughter (name mentioned in [Sled of Faerghus](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/thisoneverse/works/21899683), a side story)
> 
> Prince Armel Henri Blaiddyd, Dimitri & Ingrid's son and heir to the throne  
> Princess Edith Nilsine Blaiddyd, Dimitri & Ingrid's brand-spankin' new daughter
> 
> Zayn Eisner, Byleth & Shamir's daughter  
> Diya Eisner, Byleth & Shamir's son
> 
> Etienne ("Yen") Molinaro-Ubert, Ashe & Dedue's adopted son
> 
> i don't think i forgot anyone? ANYWAY SEE YA NEXT TIME your comments really brighten my life, by the way...thank you.


	13. Red Wolf Moon, 1194 - Lone Moon, 1195

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some warnings starting now for a bit of canon-typical violence and war imagery. Nothing graphic, but always worth a mention. Hope y'all are having fun! I am!

Maybe it would have been nicer to depart for home—for Gautier—right away. To flee the awkward confines of the monastery, where Mercedes, Amine, and Solaina received such horrible, wide-eyed stares of pity, to head home through the autumn chill into a chillier winter. In Gautier lands, at least, no one ever looks upon Mercedes and her children with pity.

But the heads of House Gautier had come to Garreg Mach to seek counsel from the Church of Seiros on an impending threat, and now that the threat has properly impended, the Archbishop’s counsel is more valuable than ever before.

“You must worry about him,” the Archbishop murmurs one afternoon after the last of the maps have been rolled up and tucked away.

The Archbishop’s counsel is valuable in many ways. Mercedes crumples back into her chair, covers her face, and bites the skin of her palm to muffle a frustrated scream. They’re alone on the second floor, not much need to hide her face, but the Archbishop closes the cardinal room door anyway to give them some privacy.

“It’s just like old times,” Mercedes huffs a laugh as the Archbishop settles into the chair beside her. “Staying after war meetings to ask my old Professor some silly question or another.”

“They were never silly.” And he doesn’t say anything else. Just waits.

Sylvain has been sending reports and letters as frequently as he can. Ever the dutiful margrave, general, husband, soldier. He’s been gone only for a month but it feels like an eternity now, simply because, if the date of today’s batch of letters was accurate, he has been on the front lines for four days since he last sent word. Four days since something else might have happened.

Sylvain makes sure to send reports at least every four days. She wonders if he’s drafting a letter to her right now.

“Did he do the right thing? Oh, never mind, I don’t know why I’m asking such a—”

“I told you they’re not silly questions.”

Mercedes drops her hands from her face, ashamed. She can feel the Archbishop’s intense, steady gaze on her, green as glass and just as cutting. “I…still agree a direct assault would have been a mistake,” she says very, very quietly. “I don’t…think it would have improved relations with Sreng.”

The Archbishop says nothing. Why would he? Clearly what Mercedes and _Sylvain_ did wasn’t what Sreng needed, either. Sreng had wanted violence, even if its people did not, and the Kingdom had wanted violence, even if its people did not. The Archbishop was right, because the Archbishop was _always_ right, and—

And now Mercedes has a feeling she understands why Sylvain’s amiable smile had cooled to stubborn ice when the Professor had so calmly demonstrated his ruthless, perfect prowess over a map where Sylvain’s people lived.

“Professor…” The Archbishop raises a single, unnaturally green eyebrow, and she swallows before continuing. “Why did you agree to teach here? All those years ago…”

Whatever he had been expecting Mercedes to ask, that clearly hadn’t been it. The Archbishop’s—the Professor’s surprise manifests almost comically on so stern a face: his lips part, both eyebrows shoot up, his eyes widen, and then immediately he scrunches his expression up, like he has to force order and tidiness into the very lines of his face, that it doesn’t come naturally.

Mercedes politely refrains from laughing.

“All those years ago,” the Professor repeats, and there’s an amused warmth to the words Mercedes doesn’t quite follow. He shakes his head. “I didn’t agree to.”

Now it’s Mercedes’s turn to express her shock. “You—what?”

The Professor hesitates, and the pause in that moment says as much as his words right after: “I never thought about what I did or didn’t want to do. My desires have never had much say in what’s best for other people.”

* * *

_My love, my heart, my most cherished correspondent Mercedes,_

_Same old, same old here at the front. You know how when me and my soldiers first showed up and I waved the Relic around in some vague imitation of Ruined Sky and the Srengi retreated to their base right away? Yeah, I miss those days, too._

_I don’t have much new to report, although hopefully the Archbishop will beg to differ and have some better insights. We gain some ground, we lose some ground. We kill some people, we lose some people. We liberated a potato farm yesterday, which was exciting for a little while, but my battalion and I returned to a camp with a way higher population than we’d left it. And yeah, you guessed it: those new happy campers had settled into the medical tent. Ambush on the way to resupply. Pretty callous, if ingenious._

_Isn’t it horrible how boring war is? It’s either so dull you want to die, or everyone’s dying but you and boredom sounds pretty damn good._

_That’s dark, I know, but I guess all I’m saying is I’m glad I’m bored most of the time. The ambush was the most unexpected excitement we’ve had since I arrived. Everything else? Premeditated slaughter._

_I need to think about how to approach Sreng from this angle, though. I can’t figure out what they want or how I’d even be able to give them that, you know? The sooner I figure out their aim, the sooner we can all come home._

_Ah, don’t let me fool you with all this doom and gloom! We really do have it covered over here. I hope you’re keeping my side of the bed warm for me, sweetness. I’ll be back before you know it._

_Love,_

_Sylvain_

* * *

“You sound a little silly,” Amine says cautiously, so much so Mercedes is almost offended.

“Silly? How is—” she says the Srengi word again, and Amine blanches, “silly? Doesn’t that mean ‘to duel?’”

Amine fidgets as only Amine can: he sits very, very still, keeps his eyes straight on the book laid flat in front of him, and flicks the edge of the paper like a metronome. It’s one of his clearest tells: whenever Amine is lying or nervous, he pays _very_ close attention and becomes the most studious little boy Mercedes has ever known.

“Mina.”

“It means a word I’m not allowed to say,” Amine confesses, deep red shooting through his pale cheeks. Mercedes’s jaw nearly drops on the desk they’re sharing. He misunderstands his mother’s shock, however, and squeezes his eyes shut. “I…I don’t know what it means, Mother, really! Just that Father said it once, all quiet, not to me, I promise—and then _I_ said it once—just once!—and he heard me and said I could _never_ say it ever, no matter how sad or mad I was! I’m sorry, Mother, I didn’t mean it, I never said it since!”

He’s beyond embarrassed; he’s scared. Amine has no idea what ‘words he’s not allowed to say’ mean in the grown-up world, only that this one had provoked such an intense reaction in Sylvain that he was _terrified_ Mercedes would reprimand him even for explaining.

What’s so ridiculous is that Sylvain has always taken his fluency in Srengi for granted; he’s written her awful love poems in the language that he then translates while keeping the internal rhyme structure, and they are _always_ flamboyant and lewd. He takes delight in it. There’s no reason Sylvain would have been furious with Amine for copying him. Not in anything, of course, but particularly not in his…colorful way of expressing himself. Mortified at worst, gleeful at best.

But Amine just curls into himself, exuding every sign of ‘please don’t ask’ a child can exude, and Mercedes does not ask. She drops it. “Okay, then you tell me correctly.”

“Tell you?”

“Challenge me to a duel, Mina.” She draws an invisible dagger and bops his nose without touching it. “Tell me how you’d say ‘Duel me’ if we were both Srengi.”

Amine relaxes. He says the phrase. Mercedes tries to repeat it, but he shakes his head. For a moment, Mercedes fears her accent or pronunciation or…whatever has horrified him yet again, but no, he’s grinning: “No, no, there’s only one of you! Only one Mother!”

“What? Did I say ‘duel us?’”

“It’s just _you_ , Mother! You say—”

Amine is young. Language comes easily to him. The boy can scarcely read with much diligence, but language is about many forms of communication, and written language is only one facet.

Later, when the children are asleep, Mercedes fetches the library’s heavy, expensively bound Srengi dictionary and looks up the word that sounded like the one she’d been trying and failing to say.

_Kill me_.

Amine had said _kill me_ in front of Sylvain. Because he’d once heard his father say it to himself.

* * *

_To the best bearer of the name ‘Mercedes’ that ever was born, to the bearer of the best children who ever bore the name ‘Gautier,’_

_I miss you._

_I know it’s useless to say it right now, but it’s true. I miss all of you and it’s only been three moons and a day. I miss waking up next to you, miss the way the skin between your pretty little brows squishes angry and offended when you realize you’ve drooled a puddle into your pillow. I miss the berry-sweet smell of your oversteeped, cold tea when you leave for the orphanages at the asscrack of dawn and forgot to drink it because you were running late. I miss Amine’s absolutely disturbing drawings of ghosts that he leaves on my desk after you tell him one of your really awful stories and I have to smile and tell him how great it is. I miss the way Solaina rubs her ears when she’s tired but refuses to admit she needs a nap until she’s face-first asleep in her lunch._

_Does she even do that anymore? Didn’t Ingrid say babies rub their ears when they’re tired, not kids? Do_ I _rub_ my _ears when I’m tired?_

_It’s only three months. She hasn’t gotten_ that _big. I’m just going crazy here, that’s all. Things are bad, Mercedes. I don’t mean victory-wise. They’re the same as always, and that’s what makes this all so…bad. We stage battles almost every day but we don’t know what we’re fighting for. I keep saying it’s to liberate the cities, and yeah, we’ve been chipping away at Macuille’s outlying lands for weeks now, but… What do the Srengi even want? Marianne doesn’t have an idea, either, so that’s not much help._

_Archbishop says I should move more aggressively on the Macuille walls. They’re old, haven’t been repaired in decades, according to records. But there are still Kingdom people inside those walls, Mercedes. Gautier people. I’m not going to make their streets a battlefield, too. Not yet. I can’t._

_This is stupid. Write me something delicious. Pretend I didn’t write any of this. Pretend I told you every single way I touch myself before I fall asleep thinking of you and only you. Pretend for me. Tell me what you do when you pretend I’m there with you, too._

_Thinking of you, and only you, and only you, and only you,_

_Sylvain_

* * *

“It’s funny, isn’t it? How there are so many Relics whose locations are still lost to us?” Linhardt asks Mercedes apropos of nothing. The servants have busied themselves with packing her family’s belongings for the return trip home, and this leaves Mercedes in an awkward social position. Her children are saying their goodbyes to Zayn and Diya, but since Mercedes made all her official goodbyes earlier in the day, she would feel odd checking up on the Professor and Shamir in an _unofficial_ capacity.

Seeing as Dimitri and Armel took off for the capital shortly after Sylvain and Marianne departed and it was made clear no further royal strategy was required, Mercedes has found herself without the company of anyone save her children these days.

And Linhardt.

“How should that be funny?” she humors him, tucking her knees under her skirt more and watching him cast a lazy fishing line into the pond.

“Well, we went to war with so many Crest-bearers, didn’t we? And against them, too,” Linhardt says, almost as an afterthought. “It’s not like we collected _all_ their Relics as war spoils.”

“You sound disappointed, Linhardt. Not nearly as disturbed as I’d suspect!”

She can _hear_ his eyeroll. “Of course I’m _disappointed_. Relics are Relics, Crests are Crests. They’re tools of war. It’s a shame that doesn’t dampen my interest more, but alas,” he half-heartedly reels in a just-as-half-hearted fish, “we can’t always pick our passions.”

Everyone witness to the fishing scene, fish included, is surprised when Linhardt expends the effort to reel it in enough to unhook the flailing creature properly. He tosses it right back in the pond, grazing a healing spell along its punctured jaw as he does so.

“Rafail’s Gem is the Relic of Lamine,” Linhardt says, like it’s a relevant sentence on its own. It is not. Mercedes hums a question, and of course he sounds put-upon as he clarifies the statement: “Haven’t you ever wondered what happened to it?”

“Not particularly.” Mercedes watches him wrap another tight knot of thread around the fishing hook. He taps the knot, and the thread dances like a wriggling piece of live bait. Off it goes into the pond. “There are Crest-bearers other than me in the world; you know that.”

_She knows that. Her mother knew it. Her step-father_ —

“Of course I know that. The Death Knight was a relative of yours. Oh, a bite!”

The creak and whizz of Linhardt’s reel muffles the sound of Mercedes’s choked inhale.

How?

How did he know?

Linhardt, of all people, how _could_ he have? Linhardt, who never trained if he could help it, hardly knows how to hold a sword, never once took a class with ‘Professor Jeritza,’ not _once_?

Had he seen under the mask?

Had he seen under the helmet?

How had he _known_?

“That was rather blunt of me, wasn’t it? It must come as quite the surprise to hear,” Linhardt is saying to the pond, “but I wouldn’t overthink it. Distant relations, most likely.”

The laugh that bubbles from her throat sounds positively hysterical.

“Distant relations,” she gasps when Linhardt peers at her out of the corner of his eyes.

“Well, relatively speaking. You’re probably both from the Empire, right? Well, _you_ at least are. Who knows where _he_ spawned from.” Linhardt successfully reels in another fish, a tinier one. He smiles at it while he unhooks, heals, and releases it. “You’re not even curious how I deduced that? You’re no fun.”

It does look suspicious, it’s true. Mercedes reaches for every scrambled emotion she has, pulls it tight and neat against her chest like embroidery, and nods where he can’t see her. “It’s…quite the suggestion, yes.”

“I saw his Crest activate at Fort Merceus. Funniest thing.”

Mercedes stares at Linhardt’s wiggling, animated cloth bait while he talks of nothing and everything.

“Isn’t that strange? The Crest of Lamine is activated by—well, _triggered_ by white magic. Odd for a man with the title of ‘Death Knight’ to do much healing, wouldn’t you say?”

Mercedes’s dry voice scrapes her throat. “When did you see it activate?”

“Hm.” Linhardt casts the line again, thinking. “A little before Ingrid killed him, actually. She was running over to him. Maybe that’s what got him killed in the end, come to think. Distracted by casting a healing spell? But it’s not like he had any allies nearby to heal…Guess we’ll never know.”

When Ingrid had been running up to the Death Knight…

When Ingrid was roaring her battle cries, charging Mercedes’s masked brother with a holy, deadly lance— _Get away from him! You’ll pay for that, you’ll pay for_ everything _!_ —Mercedes was by Sylvain’s side, wordlessly screaming while she healed him, screaming into the blood on his cracked skull, screaming from the pain of her dislocated shoulder, forcing all the magic she never knew she possessed into his body, forcing it to heal by sheer faith, sheer _will_ alone.

When Sylvain’s eyes had fluttered open, he’d smiled the stupidest, most unpracticed little grin and slurred something that sounded like a pick-up line in tone if not words, and Mercedes had never wanted to kiss someone so badly in her life.

Her shoulder hadn’t hurt when she’d pushed him flat on his back again, because he’d tried to kiss her, too.

Her shoulder hadn’t hurt when she stood up and found Ingrid standing over her brother’s cooling corpse.

“If I have to read one more book by a scholar talking about how _pious_ the Crest of Lamine makes its bearers, I’ll vomit straight into the pages,” Linhardt is still monologuing, even as he packs up his tackle box, “but it’s interesting, isn’t it?”

Mercedes does not know why she bothers replying. “What is?”

“The Crest of Lamine is tied to white magic, no? To conserving its energy. Some clergy,” Linhardt drops his voice dramatically as if it’s intentional and not because he’s falling asleep, “even say bearers of the Crest of Lamine always retain their faith in the Goddess. They never lose faith. Though that faith didn’t seem to help the Death Knight much in the end.”

Linhardt heaves a half-sigh, half-yawn, and flops back on the dock. “I wonder if he knew anyone who had the Gem,” he mumbles, and then he’s fast asleep, leaving Mercedes chilled to the bone on the docks of Garreg Mach.

* * *

_Mercedes,_

_If it wasn’t for the Edmund army, I think I would have withdrawn all Gautier forces and come home to spend the new year with you—Macuille and Angevin and Sreng be damned. We’re making corpses faster than we can dig graves to bury them. It’s a good thing it’s always winter, and better yet that it’s winter in Sreng. We can wait longer to collect our dead this way. We can fight more hours without worrying about the stench or flies. The only problem with winter is how short daytime is. How long you can stumble over your friends’ corpses in the dark._

_No one’s winning anything here. Not even Sreng. Since we took Macuille last week, they haven’t tried to get it back. Stupid of them to try, anyway—we left the walls up for a reason. Always better to do what good you can from the inside out…though there’s not much good left in anyone once you learn how easy it is to make another heart stop beating._

_We’re all tired. Cold. Not hungry, thank the Goddess and the Saints and the entire Srengi pantheon, but Sreng hasn’t flagged at all. You know how I said they left Macuille awfully quickly? Well, that’s because they’re off razing outlying lands. Villages. Random fields inhabited by no one but technically still Gautier. Maybe it’s just desperation, but since they watch and hunt us everywhere we go…we hunt them, too. It’s not like they’re leaving our scouts alive long enough for us to know what their motives are._

_If we can beat them back to the border, just retake Angevin and hold it long enough for royal reinforcements…If we can wait just long enough to prove we’re strong, we’re capable, and we’re not going anywhere until we_ talk _…maybe I can come home feeling less worthless. But until then, I have to stay out here. I have to stop this from continuing._

_I’m not letting any of our kids grow up worrying about this shit._

_I love you._

_Sylvain_

* * *

Mercedes almost drops Annie’s letter two sentences in, and it’s only because it drags against her sweat-damp fingertips that she manages to keep it close to her chest.

“You’re _pregnant_ ,” Mercedes whispers to Annie’s loopy handwriting.

“Who is?” Amine bounces down the hallway from the nursery, Solaina in tow. Both smell of soap and fresh linen and are dressed for bed despite being decidedly _out_ of bed.

“Where’s your nursemaid?” Mercedes asks, easing her sore body into an armchair by the fireplace. She’d overdone it in training—again—but the _Dowager_ just can’t seem to keep quiet, can she? Something-something _reminding those Srengi scum who his father was,_ something-something _until his own children bear the Crest too_ , something-something _the Gautier Crest, of course, Mercedes, that’s what I meant_ —

“Laney wanted to say good night before bed and she said I could come too,” Amine explains.

_She? Solai—_?

“Oh, your nursemaid—good night, Laney. Good night, Mina.” Mercedes kisses the tops of her children’s heads in turns. Solaina latches onto her leg—never a risk of pain there, for Mercedes gave up on running practice months ago—and bats long eyelashes up at her mother.

“Tuck me in, please?”

Mercedes hesitates; she really had wanted to finish the rest of Annie’s letter to see if the exclamation point at the end of the announcement was genuine as it seemed. Annie, who had been dreading another pregnancy despite wanting another child _and_ “the Fraldarius Duchy still needs a _Fraldarius_ Crest-bearer, not a _Dominic_ Crest-bearer,” because Annie’s pregnancy had been so uncomfortable that she’d needed to be on bedrest the last four weeks. Annie’s small and delicate while Mercedes is tall and broader. Both of Mercedes’s pregnancies have been much more physically manageable than Annie’s, if not emotionally.

“Who’s having a baby?” Amine interrupts both his sister’s request and his mother’s hesitation, like he can read Mercedes’s thoughts. She shakes herself.

“The Duchess of Fraldarius.” She smiles. “Your friend Dulce is going to have a little sibling, it seems.”

Solaina gasps with joy and gives Mercedes’s leg a proper shake. She does wince this time, the motion reverberating up her muscles to her strained back. She’s switched to longbows lately, which is a point of pride in itself, but—

Someone knocks on the entryway to the family quarters, three harsh, formal knocks. “Lady Gautier? Margravine? An express messenger is here.”

“Enter,” Mercedes calls, brushing her fingers over Solaina’s grip so her daughter releases her.

Well. If her family is to be disturbed at this late hour, perhaps it’s for the best that if only one of them may remain out of nightclothes, it’s the lady of the house.

She hears the guards open the door for the late-night messenger and tries to keep a casual air about her. Express messengers—either from Garreg Mach or from Sreng—are as frequent a guest in Gautier halls these days as snowflakes accidentally blown in from the late winter wind.

But when this express messenger shows her face, it is not with an expression she recognizes. Or likes.

“Margravine Gautier,” she begins, and Mercedes stands so suddenly that Solaina would have lost her balance had Amine not steadied her.

“Children, to bed.”

They make no objections. Amine herds Solaina back to the nursery with minimal trouble. Mercedes doesn’t meet his frightened glance back.

The messenger relaxes with each tiny step the children take. That’s good, right? That’s a good sign, isn’t it, if a messenger simply didn’t want small ears to hear of war—

“Thank you, milady,” the messenger says, voice tremulous. “Had your children been here, I would have had difficulty—Margravine Gautier, urgent report for you,” she corrects herself, falling back into _proper court behavior_ , and Mercedes hates how badly she appreciates the woman’s training kicking in and overriding her natural, human tendency for _compassion_ , because now her heart is racing while she snatches the extended missive from the messenger’s hand.

The Gautier seal catches on Mercedes’s thumb, just under the quick of her nail. She hides her hiss of pain and heals it while the messenger starts to speak.

“The Margrave Gautier has sustained grievous injuries and is en route to Castle Gautier for convalescence. His troops remain stationed in Macuille and Sreng-controlled—”

Mercedes hears nothing else.

She sees nothing else.

Oh, yes, the parchment is in her grip, the handwriting— _not Sylvain’s handwriting, someone else’s_ —swimming on the single page before her eyes, the messenger droning words that convey the idea that Sylvain is alive but _grievously injured_ and coming home _but they’re still at war_ and Margravine Edmund is controlling Gautier forces for the moment but _that was a week ago because it takes almost a week to get to Macuille from here and that was where Sylvain last was_ and Mercedes is humming and thanking and agreeing and telling the messenger where she can receive the rest of her payment and lodging for the night…

She sees and hears nothing but the roar of her own thoughts.

“He’ll live, Margravine. I saw him myself.”

That breaks through the din. Mercedes’s eyes refocus with enough sharpness they nearly pain her. “You _saw_ him? He—”

The messenger swallows, and Mercedes shuts up like she’d been interrupted. “He…milord was not awake when I was called to send word,” she says carefully, diplomatically, “but he…will most assuredly not die from his wounds.”

Mercedes can bear no more of this false comfort. She thanks the messenger again—and dismisses her. Because only now does she realize she never _explicitly_ told the messenger to leave the Gautier family rooms, to leave the Margravine alone.

* * *

It is a very long week, made longer still by the uncertainty of how quickly Sylvain’s retinue will be willing to move their injured lord. Perhaps they will rush and it will be a scant few days? No, they will take their time and it will be a week. No, perhaps they will take _very_ careful time and he won’t be back until the Great Tree Moon?

Made even longer still by:

“It’s irresponsible of you,” the Dowager declares, head high and feet planted in the door of Mercedes’s office like these are still _her_ quarters. Mercedes sips from her teacup so she doesn’t spit more words she’ll one day regret. Sylvain’s mother, however, views this as an invitation to continue. “It’s for situations _exactly_ like this one that Crest registry is so crucial! If you had tested your son when he was born, as _tradition_ dictates—”

“Then what?” Mercedes cuts in, because even the mention of her son in this woman’s _mouth_ is always what does it, “Then what? If we knew Amine bore the Crest of Gautier—”

“—we don’t even _know_ if he—”

“—would we have a six-year-old leading our troops at Macuille? Is that what you think would have happened? He tried to assure Sylvain he could wield the Lance of Ruin, you know. He did try to _do his duty_ as the heir.”

“The heir of House _Gautier_ bears the _Crest_ of Gautier—”

“And if he doesn’t?” Mercedes keeps her voice level only by hanging onto the last threads of her self-control alongside the breathing exercises she must do to cast white magic and the patience she’s cultivated with her archery training, the way she must wait to aim and strike true and sharp. “If Amine has no Crest at all, and Sylvain were to die,” the word chokes her, “and Solaina has no Crest, then Sreng would still threaten us all and they would _still_ be only children. Whether they have Crests or not is irrelevant.”

“Incorrect, naïve yet again, Mercedes!” her mother-in-law shouts, all decorum lost in the face of Mercedes’s mask of calm. “It is _not_ irrelevant. You’ve such a large age gap between your two children. If your son does indeed prove Crestless, you and Sylvain should have—”

“Should have what? Had two or three more children by now? Forgive me, my lady, but you’re well aware of how long it takes for a child to grow inside a woman. Or perhaps you’re remembering how many children one _man_ can make in a single evening? Because if that’s the case,” _patience, aim true_ , _strike sharp_ , “I see why your late husband’s last resort was to take a second _wife_ and not a fourth _mistress_.”

Mercedes hates to admit how long she’s been waiting to gloat over the stupefied silence sure to follow, to lord over her mother-in-law for one cruel instant, and so she hates even more how Sylvain’s mother won’t let her even _have_ a stupefied silence at all. “You insolent, ignorant little girl,” the woman sneers. “If you were half as clever as you make yourself out to be, you’d know better than to spout such drivel.”

Of course Sylvain’s mother would _never_ let someone like Mercedes lord over _anything_ as long as the Dowager is involved.

“Sylvain is injured,” Mercedes says as if neither of them had spoken. Neither retorting nor submitting. “He and his troops will arrive in mere days, Goddess willing. I’ve preparations to make that his current retinue cannot handle on their own, and that Sylvain was not in…the state to do so himself. If you have no further news to report to me, I must ask you to leave me to my duties.”

Sylvain’s mother must be handled with kid gloves, as Mercedes has taken too long to learn. Courtesy, duty, nobility, politeness, tradition…all these words and their trappings ring in the woman’s ears like whistles for a hunting hound. No matter her mood, no matter her feelings, if Mercedes frames her wishes as commands dressed up for court, Sylvain’s mother will fall in line.

And fall she does. She leaves without another word, with hardly a slam to Mercedes’s office door.

Beautiful, peaceful solitude. Mercedes immediately bursts into tears so hot she can’t tell if they scald or soothe. Either way, it feels so, so, so, so, _so, so, so good_.

“I’m the Margravine,” she whispers into the calluses on her fingertips. “ _I’m_ the Margravine.”

She fills out a blank invoice to the local mine for umbral steel and schedules Sylvain’s preferred blacksmith an immediate appointment to repair the Lance of Ruin. No one besides Sylvain at Sreng has a Relic, and Marianne had never fought beside them during the war; it makes sense that she would not have known what to do with Sylvain’s shattered Relic and sent it along instead of asking permission for some other general to borrow it. Mercedes writes her a letter informing her of the repair process and granting her future, carefully-phrased permission as soon as the ink dries on the blacksmith schedule.

She arranges for a rotating staff of healers and, upon seeing House Gautier’s paltry list of named mages and their specialties, draws upon her own experience in white magic. She adds a few more names, a few more specialties.

Orders more herbs, more tonics, more salves no one here bothered to mention.

Tallies the costs, sets the more complex numbers aside with a note to the treasurer and his son asking them to confirm before she signs approval with the Crest of Gautier’s seal.

That same Crest glitters in her ring as she presses the seal down into hot wax on the last invoice missive, and Mercedes can’t help but laugh. She’s an honorary bearer of the Crest of Gautier too, isn’t she?

Before dropping the veritable parcel of letters and orders with the seneschal, Mercedes checks on Amine and Solaina, curled around each other on the rug in her own bedroom by the fireplace.

Amine stirs at her approach, blinking discombobulated brown eyes up at her. “Is Father—” he starts to ask, but quiets when Mercedes shakes her head. Solaina, still asleep, burrows deeper into his chest. His arms wrap around his sister on reflex; Mercedes debates sitting down with him, holding the two of them so that he’s not left comforting his sleeping sister on his own, but Amine closes his eyes, too, and he looks more comforted even than Solaina. Mercedes leaves them be, heart tight against her ribs.

“Margravine,” the seneschal says when she hands him the stack of parchment, “word’s just arrived from the groundskeeper. The Margrave and his soldiers should be at the castle before midnight; they’ve just been sighted crossing the forest bridge.”

_Did they seem well? They asked for nothing, no aid, no supplies? Did anyone see him?_

“Thank you, Seneschal,” Mercedes says, and goes back to wait with her children without another word. She doesn’t need another word, another excuse, another reason, anything. Doesn’t need to explain why she does things to anyone, not to _anyone_ , not even herself.

Mercedes is the Margravine now.

It’s an hour before midnight when Sylvain and his soldiers return to Castle Gautier. It’s two minutes after this news has been spread that Mercedes steps into the infirmary, forcing calm into every muscle twitch in her body as if she’s here as a healer, not a lady, not a lover. There are so many mages and soldiers moving around the small space, setting up herbalist stations and dropping trunks and unbuckling armor and pouring boiling water, that Mercedes can’t see much of where they’re moving Sylvain except for a glimpse of dirty red hair.

“He’s sleeping, Margravine,” one of the soldiers says softly once he catches sight of her and bows. “The Margrave’s stable, just resting.”

It’s midnight. Sylvain will be here in the morning.

Sylvain is _here_.

Mercedes nods, thanks the soldier with a smile, and whisks herself back to the family quarters, the frantic buzzes and hums of her thoughts slowing with each step her slipper whispers along the stone.


	14. Lone Moon, 1195 - Great Tree Moon, 1195

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hewwo! Long chapter--very long chapter--because of this silly reason: my outline is like, "BIG TIMELINE" with hopeful blocks of chapter numbers scattered throughout. And sometimes I scatter those numbers wrong. So! Here is...the wrong scatter.
> 
>  **BUT THIS IS AN IMPORTANT NOTE**  
>  We're getting into canon-typical violence now, except, you know, in prose form. It's never gory, never overtly graphic, but injuries are described as is healing them, and combat stuff will be, too. I don't think I need to tag specific content warnings beyond "canon-typical violence," as I have, but if there's anything you feel I _do_ need to tag, ofc let me know!
> 
> a fun fact is i have experienced Much of this story's fun medical stuff, tho, so maybe that helps
> 
> i've finally accepted this isn't fluff, but it IS fluff in hindsight because everything turns out okay! "but nena, that is just Angst With A Happy Ending" NO IT'S DIFFERENT

Mercedes does not sleep that night, nor does she wish to. At the second bell, her personal healer knocks on her door to see if she needs another spell for her typical agonizing cramps—she does—but when the woman leaves, Mercedes doesn’t use the fading pain as an excuse to collapse in her bed and never rise. She has too much to do even as she does nothing but pace.

“Margravine, the herb shipment is here,” the seneschal informs her just after the third bell rings. She forces an imitation of a smile on her lips.

“Very good. Please compensate the messenger for their haste.”

“By how much, my lady?”

At the mention of specific numbers—oh, why can’t she remember the exact cost of the purchase? —Mercedes falters, but only for a moment. Her mother-in-law usually pays one hundred gold for every item. “One hundred and twenty gold for every herb,” Mercedes says. “Tallied, that would be…”

Oh, dear.

The seneschal, bless him, knows her well enough by now that he only nods, bows, and scribbles the all-too-basic calculation on the invoice. He holds it out for her to double-check.

It looks…right. Probably. “Thank you,” Mercedes says. With another bow, the seneschal departs, and Mercedes returns to pacing in front of the sitting room fireplace once again.

She pays another messenger a half hour later for salves, and yet another mere moments after for tonics. Her tireless seneschal informs her near sunrise that the white mages she requested have been summoned and most of them are expected to arrive at various hours throughout the day. She tells him which quarters to assign each one—guest quarters for the mages with titles, higher-ranking servants’ quarters for the ‘common’ ones.

The sun streams harsh colored light through the stained glass when the seneschal returns one final time to tell her Sylvain’s current head white mage requests her presence.

“Is he awake?” Mercedes asks before the sentence has fully left the seneschal’s mouth. “The Margrave, is he—”

The seneschal shakes his head, and it takes every ounce of poise she possesses not to slump while upright. “Not to my knowledge, my lady.”

Mercedes stifles her sigh and forces her feet to move towards the door at a reasonable pace. “Thank you,” she remembers to say, and the seneschal bows as he holds the door open for her.

As she heads for the stairs down to the first floor, she realizes the seneschal has remained upstairs. She catches the flutter of his shirt as he opens a servant’s passage and slips inside.

He’s left the running of the castle, town, and delicate situation to her. He hasn’t gone to anyone else for aid.

Because Mercedes is the Margravine Gautier.

Because Mercedes has _been_ the Margravine Gautier.

But now she can act like one.

Mercedes shakes the self-indulgent thoughts from her mind, lifts the hem of her skirt, and—decorum shoved aside—runs for the infirmary.

* * *

Sylvain is indeed not awake when she arrives, but the only reason she knows this is because he doesn’t greet her. Healers galore still surround him; even the soldier from yesterday—well, earlier today—naps in a chair still half-garbed in armor, blocking Sylvain from her sight.

Her mad dash into the room alerts every conscious person present, however. Startled mages clinking bottles and mixing new salves bump into each other, offering a flurry of subsequent apologies to her, to each other, to the head healer now striding towards her.

“Margravine,” he says, ignoring the bustle around him. Calm and clinical, just as a proper healer should be.

“You desired my presence?” Mercedes asks, the lofty words rolling off her tongue in a way she hates.

“Yes.” Mercedes has always liked this man. He treats her like a peer, a fellow scholar of healing. Not his employer nor his inferior. It’s a shame she has to keep up appearances with so many others around. “Your husband—Margrave Gautier requires ‘round the clock care.”

Mercedes nods. She had expected as much.

The healer strokes his impressive beard while he continues, “I’m grateful for the supplies you had waiting for us. As you probably know, we’re not used to being so…well-stocked in Gautier. The yarrow root is especially appreciated; I have my mages grinding it into salves right now.” He nods in the direction of the robed mages, who are mashing the plant with their pestles like the fate of the world depends on their speed.

And speaking of speed, Mercedes has the feeling her _peer_ is taking too long to get to the point. “Take me to him.” The healer hesitates, and while Mercedes would love to be strong and insist, the fact he needs to hesitate at all feels foreboding. “What happened?” she asks instead.

The healer straightens and tugs at his beard again. “Meteor. The spell, that is.”

Mercedes gapes. “But the Srengi don’t usually _have_ mages—”

The healer shrugs. “These ones do, apparently. Rather, just one, or at least one powerful enough to cast the spell. Regardless,” and his professionally dispassionate air returns, “he was fortunate enough to get caught on the tail end of the blast. Half his battalion wasn’t so lucky.”

Mercedes can’t help the way her gaze drifts to the dozing soldier. His armor, upon closer inspection, bears the faintest of scorch marks. She looks away.

“There’s more to it,” Mercedes says, not asks. The healer nods.

“You heard the Relic broke, did you not?”

“It can be fixed,” she assures him, but this doesn’t seem to be what interests him.

“Once its Crest stone dimmed, he became hard to find on the battlefield. And with—”

“On the _battlefield_?” Mercedes repeats too loudly. The sleeping soldier snorts, and she lowers her voice. “On the battlefield? Half his battalion dead and he didn’t…he didn’t _retreat_?”

“No, my lady.” The mage hesitates _again_ , and now Mercedes knows whatever comes next is what he was reluctant to tell her. “From what I understand, he didn’t have time. A general of that particular battle was upon him moments after. The smoke hid him as he approached. Some sort of…hammer, I suppose. I haven’t the faintest idea what Srengi weapons look like, thanks to the Goddess. And thanks to our Margrave.”

Her mouth is dry. It’s good the healer keeps speaking, because she’s struggling to wipe the image from her mind. Sylvain, surrounded by corpses of his own beloved soldiers, the ones he’d trained himself when he was bored with paperwork. Sylvain, body dark with ash and blood. Sylvain, staring up at a face full of hate charging through the flames. Sylvain, lance broken and burnt and useless, trying to sling one last spell from his weaponless hands—

“The left side of his ribcage is broken. His lung collapsed. Thankfully, the healers at the base camp were able to save his arm, but—”

Mercedes wants to see him.

She pushes through the packed room, mages scattering in their lady’s wake, until she reaches Sylvain’s bed.

Her brother had only cracked his skull. This nameless general had shattered his _body_.

The crumpled sheets gather around his hips to give the healers easy access to his injuries, and oh, sweet Sothis, but there are _so many_. Angry splotches of raw red skin, violet bruises against his ribs instead of shadows, cuts not yet scars slicing patches through his arm hair, cold sick sweat dotting his chest over the freckles.

“He’s sleeping, not unconscious,” the healer’s voice says somewhere behind her, some cloudy place beyond her mind. “We have to keep him sedated so he doesn’t break his ribs each time he screams. It happens with injuries like these.”

Mercedes feels no shame when tears begin to drip down her cheeks in silence. They land on Sylvain’s bare chest, each of his shallow breaths forcing them down his _broken_ , _horribly broken_ ribs.

She’s healed worse than this. But she’s never needed to heal _him_. His injury at Fort Merceus was nothing compared to this.

“And his lung?” she chokes out.

“Again, the healers did fine work,” the man beside her says, this time more gently. “You know such a thing is easy to heal compared to the rest.”

“He’ll live,” Mercedes repeats the assurance from earlier, but this time, it sounds more like a command.

“He’ll live, Margravine.”

* * *

“When can we see him?” Amine asks anxiously. Mercedes hesitates, and her son notices: his shoulders slump in his chair, hard enough his chin tucks into his chest. “Is Father…?”

He doesn’t complete the sentence, blinking back tears, but Mercedes knows what he’s terrified to give words to. “Father will be just fine,” she tells him. This doesn’t reassure him; Amine gnaws at his lower lip and refuses to meet her eyes. “I just came from the infirmary, remember, darling? I spoke with the healer myself.”

“But _I_ didn’t,” Amine sulks.

If Mercedes were to bring their children to the infirmary right this instant, she’s fairly certain their father’s state would traumatize them forever. Amine is too empathetic even when he heals his pony’s sore hoof, and Solaina is impressionable at age three. However…

“What if I bring Father’s healer to you?” She brightens at her genius idea. Amine wrings his hands, thinking it over, before he nods.

“Thank you, Mother. I’d…be happy.”

“Now, he’s a very busy man, you understand?” she cautions her son. “And he’s working extremely hard to take good care of your father. It might be some time before I can borrow him, and even then, I’m not certain for how long.”

Amine blinks, and Mercedes hastens to give her absent-minded son some more specific details and expectations: “By the end of the day, at the very latest. Does that seem fair?”

“Yes, Mother.”

But he does seem consoled, at least for the time being. He continues poking his book more than reading it, yes, but at least his brown eyes are no longer quite as wide nor quite as frightened.

Solaina, meanwhile, has remained uncharacteristically quiet as she plays with her toys.

Mercedes probably should sit with her son and practice her Srengi more, too. Set a good example, show him what results dedication and perseverance can bring about. But the somber and methodical way Solaina dresses her dolls and lines them in a row in utter silence…

She gets up from her chair and joins Solaina on the floor.

Amine needs to be distracted from his Father’s return. Solaina, it seems, needs to be reminded of it. No easy feat when they both are in the room; perhaps she should wait until later, or not at all. But Solaina had cried for _weeks_ after Sylvain had left. She’s old enough now to understand what all the bustle is about.

A cold shiver of fear works its way down Mercedes’s spine as she recalls a line of one of Sylvain’s many, many letters:

 _Does Solaina even rub her ears anymore? No, it’s only been three months. She hasn’t gotten_ that _big. I’m just going crazy, is all_.

Surely Solaina hasn’t forgotten her father after five months?

“Are you happy Father’s home safe and sound?” Mercedes asks her, softly enough Amine might not hear. Solaina looks up from her dolls and stares at her with the same wide brown eyes as her brother’s.

As her father’s.

Solaina nods, a quick and jerky motion, then returns to shuffling her dolls about in military formation.

Mercedes doesn’t know what to say. Or what to believe.

She’s spared by three dolls suddenly thrust into her lap. “March with me,” Solaina says, grinning happy and oblivious with her pearly baby teeth. “Like this, do like this.” She demonstrates, shuffling the dolls to and fro, then waits for Mercedes to join in. Mercedes takes too long to arrange them properly, and Solaina heaves a sigh that Mercedes, in a more disciplinary mood, might categorize as a _scoff_. “No, like _this_! Play like _this_!”

Sylvain is forgotten in the name of smaller battles, ones that end in naps and lessons in tidiness.

Well, Mercedes reminds herself as Solaina’s nursemaid whisks her away, bigger battles end in sleep and clean-up too, don’t they?

* * *

_To the Margrave and Margravine of House Gautier,_

_First, I must express my thanks to the Margravine Gautier for granting her express permission for me to lead Gautier troops while Margrave Gautier convalesces. I will not misplace your trust and am honored by it._

_Second, I have a brief update regarding the situation at the former Angevin territory. We have reclaimed the remains of the town, albeit at great cost. Scavengers were quick to descend upon its ruins after we sustained heavy losses on the battlefield, and we felt it was our duty to protect what refugees remained._

_Finally, the Srengi forces have retreated to the hills. Their position at higher ground plus Sreng’s longer winters and colder springs has made advancing difficult, and they continue to raid Kingdom villages. We have written to the capital as well as the Church of Seiros to request aid._

_Still, morale remains higher than it was when the Margrave Gautier was forced to heal his injuries._

_I thank you again for your trust. We shall not disappoint you._

_Long live the King and Queen,_

_Margravine Marianne von Edmund_

* * *

“So, you truly agree? This week isn’t so terrible an idea?”

Her former Professor nods. Is that relief on his face, or does Mercedes merely hope to see it? “Your healers know what they’re doing,” he says. “I was impressed. Your trust in them was well placed.”

Mercedes beams. “Oh, I don’t—” _Confidence, Mercedes_! “Thank you.”

The corners of the Professor’s lips twitch.

“Still,” she sighs as they continue meandering away from the infirmary, “it’s so silly, but I’m glad you’ll be organizing the Knights of Seiros before the healers wake him. We’re in desperate need of reinforcements, yet I can’t help but feel it’d be so… _tactless_ for him to watch the, ah, Church’s forces march for Sreng when he can’t be there himself.”

“You mean _my_ forces, right?”

Mercedes’s breath catches.

Her Professor’s expression still bears a hint of amusement, but it’s now it’s an even fainter hint. His eyes remain humorless.

“Do you dislike him, too? My…husband.”

The Professor, Mercedes notices, can never mask his surprise. Such exaggerated features: wide eyes, parted lips, a slight stumble…She’d think it false on anyone else, but the Professor’s deadpan never slips even when he _is_ joking that she doesn’t think he’s even aware of it.

“I don’t dislike him in the slightest,” he says, but the sudden _coldness_ in his voice seems to say otherwise.

“This may not help, Professor,” Mercedes says, as if that’s still his only title, “but I don’t think Sylvain dislikes you, either.”

“Hm.”

They’ve stopped walking. Mercedes hadn’t realized until now. She musters courage she doesn’t understand why she needs and gestures for them to continue.

“Maybe he used to,” Mercedes grants him, aware she’s rather ignorant of their history and is stabbing in the dark, “but I think lately, he’s had more…complications with what you _represent_ than with _you_.”

That twitch of a smile again, that blankness in his eyes. “What do you think I represent?”

“I…” He’s aware of her cluelessness. All Mercedes has to go on is what she knows of Sylvain. “The Church? That he can’t…feign being a ‘good-for-nothing’ anymore? Your children? All of our children,” she hastens to add when the Professor’s eyes flash in a moment of familiar, fatherly vulnerability.

Silence while they walk.

“Probably all of it,” the Professor finally says once they reach the castle’s reception hall. “We’d made amends before his father passed.”

Mercedes isn’t quite aware they’d _needed_ to ‘make amends’ until recently, but the Professor doesn’t need to know that. She tries to channel his unaffected expression onto her own.

“But the Church part,” the Professor goes on, “that’s something Sylvain should probably keep to himself.”

Mercedes agrees, and not just because she’s devout. A head of a prominent Kingdom House must be careful to show respect to—

“His injury could have been much worse. He could have been dead.”

The Professor’s face has never been so unreadable. It’s his ‘Archbishop face.’

“Yes, thank the Goddess he’s safe,” a baffled but earnest Mercedes says.

“Thank the Goddess indeed,” the Archbishop says, but it’s in the Professor’s voice.

Mercedes doesn’t understand.

But then he grins so abruptly it’s her turn to be taken aback, and says, “It’s not a tactless move at all, by the way. It’s the _tactical_ one.”

As if they think he suddenly needs protection, bodyguards step out of the shadows and escort their Archbishop out the castle doors long before the pun even registers in her mind.

* * *

If Mercedes had worried about her children seeing Sylvain asleep and injured, it pales in comparison to her fear of seeing Sylvain awake and injured.

But here she remains in the infirmary, watching the healers prepare to withdraw their sedating spell, and she has never been so afraid of seeing her favorite shade of brown flicker beneath fluttering eyelids. She knows this type of magic. She’s performed it on countless soldiers. She even performed it on Sylvain once, but he’d been sedated only a day, not for a week on the road and more than a week at home, and still she’d had a breakdown after.

So the head healer, who had been surprisingly gentle with her children, had granted her permission to be present, but expressly forbade her from participating. Mercedes doesn’t mind complying.

“Steady,” he now says to the two women holding Sylvain’s shoulders. They’re trained mortal savants. Burlier than the average mage, and hopefully stronger than Sylvain in his weakened state. The rest of the mages gather around Sylvain’s bed, hands raised above him and magic thick in the air redolent of electrified steel.

The healer raises his own hand, although it isn’t sparking. Mercedes and the loyal foot soldier who had visited Sylvain ever day hold their breath. She can hear the man’s teeth grind.

The healer lowers his hand, the mages draw white threads of magic _from_ Sylvain’s skin, and the mortal savants wrangle Sylvain to the sheets as he tries to bolt upright.

His jaw drops and his mouth howls around nothing save a silent scream.

And his eyes, the beautiful brown eyes Mercedes had missed so much, don’t seem to see anything at all.

“Steady,” the head healer says again, louder, which is good because Mercedes’s pulse thunders through her skull and it’s the only thing she can hear except for the cries of pain Sylvain _isn’t_ making but that she’s imaging in too much detail. This is normal. It’s _normal_. Sylvain’s not wracked with pain; he _thinks_ he’s in pain, because the last time he was truly conscious was probably when he was fresh off the battlefield.

It doesn’t make watching him struggle easier.

“I need to—” The foot soldier doesn’t finish his sentence, just hurries out of the room. Mercedes doesn’t blame him. The only thing keeping her here is her love freezing her in place, watching Sylvain heave too-shallow breaths as the mortal savants let one hand move to his chest. He lets himself fall back to the bed, lets himself as only an exhausted man can.

The head healer beckons Mercedes over once Sylvain stops struggling. He’s closed his eyes again, but Mercedes knows he’s awake. She’s seen him asleep too many times asleep in their bed, in a medical tent, to be fooled—

“I have tests to run now,” the healer says tersely, “but you won’t be in the way for them.”

Mercedes understands, and one of the mages does, too. She sinks into the chair that’s materialized by his bedside and places her trembling hands on the thin mattress, careful not to touch his skin.

“Sylvain,” she whispers.

His breath stutters.

“Sylvain, I’m here.”

“You shouldn’t be,” Sylvain says, or tries to: disuse makes his voice sound like gravel on sand. But Mercedes has no trouble understanding. Her eyebrows pinch together.

“Of course I should. I’m always here for you.”

His head lolls on the pillow, half-turned towards her. The healer’s hands keep roaming the space above Sylvain’s body. “Did Marianne send you?” he asks.

“What? Marianne? No, darling, she’s still on the battlefield.”

Now Sylvain’s eyes do snap open. “The _battlefi_ —”

The mortal savants are there in an instant as he tries to sit up. The healer clicks his tongue in disapproval, but it’s aimed at Mercedes, not Sylvain, and she wants to kick herself for her idiocy.

 _Yes, Mercedes, you foolish girl; he still thinks he’s just gotten injured_.

“You’re back home,” she says to his wild stare. “You’re safe now. You’re healing. Are you in pain?”

Sylvain blinks at her, then again, like he has to get used to the sensation. Mercedes can see the tension ease from his scarred shoulders, and the mortal savants release their hold. “Not…much,” he rasps.

Then, _then_ , he has the _audacity_ to wink at her.

To _wink_.

“C’mon,” he smirks, always charming in a bed not his own. “It’d take way more than this to kill me.”

Mercedes bursts into tears, and the mortal savants have to restrain a startled Sylvain _again_ when he tries to reach for her.

_Thank the Goddess._

_Thank the Goddess indeed_.

* * *

They give him exercises to do after so much time spent sedated and unmoving. Sylvain hates them. They’re for his limbs, the legs especially, although of course there are plenty for his arms. The first thing he asks about—even before he asks about how the troops are—is the Lance of Ruin, because he remembers his panic when it broke. “My father’s probably burning in hell, waiting to beat the shit out of me for that,” he laughs hard enough he winces.

“You’re not going to hell,” Mercedes says, ignoring his noncommittal hum so she can tell him it’s safe at the blacksmith. His smile is soft and beautiful and private when she adds, “Your troops kept it safe.”

She wants to kiss that smile, but she refrains. She hasn’t kissed him yet at all. Two days awake and she thinks he’s embarrassed to be helpless in front of her, even as he stares at her mouth every time she speaks, the tip of his tongue darting out to trace his lower lip, his eyes dark when she waits for him to respond to whatever she’s said.

The healer also told them to…control themselves, so that’s probably part of it, too.

But his injuries have healed well in all the time he spent abed, and Mercedes ensures the entire healing staff is paid more than her mother-in-law likes. They’ve healed so well, in fact, those same talented healers reprimand him for pushing himself too hard as the days pass.

“I’m gonna forget how to use a lance,” he mutters darkly when his exercises are over at the end of the first week. Mercedes makes a mistake and laughs.

“I would have thought you’d enjoy an excuse to stop training!”

The stare he bestows upon her tells her everything. But he says anyway, dangerous and quiet and almost condescending in its empty humor, “There’s a war on, Mercedes.”

“Right. Yes. I’d…yes.”

“Speaking of,” Sylvain brightens so quickly she almost gasps, “how’s Marianne doing? You said she’s commanding Gautier troops, right?”

Mercedes nods, relieved to change the subject, even if it’s back to _war_. “Yes! And doing a marvelous job. She says they miss you but haven’t faltered, especially now they hear you’re awake and are recovering.”

That private smile again. Mercedes remembers how it feels to form bonds with her battalions, but she’s never led an entire _army_ before.

She wonders how that camaraderie feels, too. If she _could_ feel it, inspire in her troops—

“Oh! I can’t believe I forgot!”

Sylvain’s smile turns lopsided, and now it’s private because it’s just for her. He shifts on his pillow, turning his head just a little to look and listen. “Forget something _fun_?”

She missed his teasing.

“We have reinforcements!” His eyes widen. The head healer has long retired to his room and probably would scold her for getting Sylvain all riled up, but this seems important. “Well, not now, but soon. I know Fhirdiad is gathering their forces, and the Knights of Seiros should be on their way by the beginning of the month.”

Sylvain, to her surprise, frowns. “Beginning of the month? Which month? Great Tree?”

Mercedes doesn’t think so. The shape of the words in her memory do not look like ‘Great Tree.’

“No, it’s…ah, it’s…” She pressed two fingers to her forehead and squeezes her eyes shut, trying to remember. “Oh, dear! I can’t recall. It’s in the Archbishop’s letter.”

Sylvain’s frown had deepened the moment she said ‘no,’ far earlier than her mention of the Archbishop. “He sent a letter? I thought you said he showed up while I was…out of it.”

“Both!” Mercedes rises and pats the mattress, bestowing him with what she hopes is a reassuring smile. “I’ll check the correspondence.”

This seems to placate him. He shifts under the blankets—the healers have given him more than thin sheets, now that they no longer require such frequent instant access to his wounds—and grins. “Yeah, thanks. Can you bring everything I missed, actually? It’s not like I have much else to do, and I should get caught up before I head back.”

“Before you—” Mercedes, halfway to the door, freezes mid-step and mid-sentence. “Before you _what_?”

“Uh, before I head back, I said,” Sylvain says slowly. Like to a spooked horse. Or a slow child. “Again, Mercedes: _there’s a war on_.”

Mercedes stares. The cold gripping her body and speech now trickles ice through her veins.

“You’re injured,” she manages.

“Not much anymore.”

“You’re…you’re _injured_. You have…Sylvain, you’re still getting your limbs back, you haven’t…trained, you—”

“Yeah. So better for me to know the situation so I can get ready sooner, right?” With shaking arms, Sylvain pushes himself to a half-sitting position before he gives up and settles into a slouch. “I’ve been away for almost a month. Even if I left for Sreng right now, it would still _be_ a month I’d been gone.”

“You _can’t_ leave now—”

“You think I don’t know that?” Anger, genuine anger flashing through his eyes shuts Mercedes up. “You know how weak I look right now? Not just like,” here he gestures to his body, “but to everyone? To our enemies, knowing they kicked their most _hated_ general out of the fight? To our fucking people, who’ve always said I’m…soft, cowardly, pathetic? You know how awful it is to hear I’m _not like my father_ and not even…be proud of that? Fuck, Mercedes,” he snaps, and it fills her with shame, “neither of us even want our _kids_ to see me like this. Like…like fucking this! I can’t protect _anyone_ like this.”

The entire healing staff is going to have her head, Mercedes knows, for getting him so ‘riled up.’ Surely she knew better. Surely she can use her voice.

She can’t.

This is her fault.

How careless of her.

“If Margravine Edmund pushes Sreng back without any help from House Gautier,” Sylvain says, softer but no less enraged, “then Gautier will _never_ know peace. Amine will spend the rest of his life defending our people from Sreng attack after Sreng attack, because they’ll think we’re _pathetic_ , and our kid is _good_ and he fucking…heals Solaina’s fucking dolls when she breaks them and I never want him to stop doing stupid shit like that. And we both know he doesn’t have a Crest, so it’s not like Sreng’ll even be scared of the Lance of Ruin like they’ve always been. Mercedes,” he hisses, sitting up more, “I don’t want to keep trying to fuck a _Crest baby_ into you before your body won’t let you anymore, just so I can tell Amine and Solaina they’re worthless. I won’t let them _do_ that to us.”

There are a lot of people included in that ‘them.’ Mercedes nods. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” Sylvain doesn’t lie back down. He just calms his breathing, calms his expression, but anger and fire still burn in his brown eyes. “Mercedes. Babe. Please. I need to see the letters I missed.”

 _Babe_.

Sylvain has always hated calling her that.

Mercedes nods again and gets the letters, mortified and ashamed. Hiding things from him has never been how she’s protected Sylvain, herself, anyone. It’s only ever made them both unhappy.

“I’m sorry,” she says again upon her return, and Sylvain says “I love you” at the same time.

Mercedes deposits the thick parcel of letters on his bedside table far away from the bottles and healing equipment. Sylvain watches her, not the parcel. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I got…overexcited.”

She shakes her head. “I know it wasn’t for me.”

“Still, I need to keep my temper bett—”

“I love you,” Mercedes says, kissing his forehead. He closes his eyes, and even though now that brown is hidden from her once more, the creases in his forehead relax. When has his skin shown creases?

 _Before your body won’t let you_ _anymore_.

Sylvain shifts, eyes still closed, unable to see the memories shudder through her spine.

Later, when he awakens from his light doze, he reads the Archbishop’s letter first. Mercedes remembers at the same time, however, that the Archbishop had promised the Knights of Seiros would be ready to _march_ at the beginning of the month _after_ next.

* * *

The family reunion could have gone far worse, but it could have gone much better. Mercedes is only glad her mother-in-law had visited her son on her own, then feigned fragility or illness or what-have-you before Mercedes had even invited her to join the rest of the family.

“Father!” Amine cries, ready to launch himself onto the bed as if Sylvain is merely waking up from a nap and not bundled up inside the infirmary. The head healer catches him literally by his collar like this isn’t the heir of House Gautier and likely his future employer.

“Have care, boy,” the healer says, and Sylvain flinches. Mercedes isn’t sure if it’s because of the lack of propriety or the implication his six-year-old son could cause him lasting damage. She assumes it’s the latter; fresh-from-war Sylvain tends to care less about _propriety_ than he does even on a normal day as amongst-the-nobility Sylvain does.

Amine does not notice, however, and merely sulks his way to his father’s bedside. “Hi, Father,” he says. Sylvain holds out his hand, and Amine squeezes it. “I missed you.”

“I missed you too, pal,” Sylvain croaks, and that’s all it takes for Amine to sniffle and cry and sob and ignore the healer’s yelp of concern when he falls face-first onto the crook of Sylvain’s elbow. Sylvain waves the man off with his free arm.

No pain anymore. Mercedes sighs a relieved exhale she didn’t know she held.

“I missed training with you,” is what Amine says next, and now is the one who fails to hide her wince. Their son wipes his tears on Sylvain’s skin and lifts his head to stare a watery gaze at Sylvain’s face. “I _never_ thought I’d miss training!”

Sylvain huffs a laugh, and thank the Goddess but it sounds genuine. “I never thought you would, either.”

“Are you sick?”

“I’m not sick.”

“Can I heal you?”

“Nah, I’m good, Mina-baby. But thanks.”

“Solaina,” Mercedes looks down at their daughter, who grips her skirt with one hand and gnaws the thumb of the other, “would you like to say hello to Father?”

Solaina keeps gnawing her thumb, eyes burning holes into the stone tiles.

Conversation between Amine and Sylvain begins to peter out. Mercedes smooths Solaina’s dark blonde hair out of her face, but Solaina just shakes it back into place again.

“Laney?”

“Hey, Laney,” Sylvain croaks. Amine does not leave his father’s side as Sylvain shifts around enough to sit up; stronger and stronger each day, although he continues to complain about his ‘slow’ progress. He peers over the edge of the bed and grins. “Look at you. I hardly recognize you; you’ve gotten so big!”

The lighthearted words somehow make Mercedes’s stomach sink. “Laney,” she murmurs, though of course there’s no way she can mask the words, “you remember your father, right?”

The heartbeat between her question and Solaina’s shaky nod sends terrified tremors through her fingers. Solaina pops her own fingers out of her mouth and says to her mother, “Father’s got wrinkles,” and although Sylvain practically falls back into bed in shock—and probably outrage—Mercedes laughs hard enough that Amine, confused, joins in, which offends _Solaina_. “On his tummy! Wrinkles on his tummy, like _this_ —” she reaches out to poke a mostly-but-not-quite-healed scar and the healer bats _her_ away now, too.

“They’re called _scars_ , Solaina,” Sylvain informs her, still miffed.

“They’re ugly,” Solaina informs him right back, and that makes him drop his pout.

“Yeah,” he sighs. “Yeah, they’re really ugly.” He opens his arms. Mercedes, following a resigned nod from the head healer, deposits Solaina on the bed. She doesn’t snuggle up into his side like she used to, but that’s probably for the best.

Watching her son insist he heal her husband’s _ugly wrinkles_ , her daughter watch the exchange with nothing short of judgment on her three-year-old face, her husband take offense because he _earned them so you won’t have to_ , _no_ , _Mina, I didn’t_ steal _them from you, come on, don’t be like that_ …

Mercedes wants her son to keep healing useless ‘wounds,’ too. She wants her daughter to keep remembering— _almost_ —her family. She wants her husband to keep laughing at the scars he’d _earned so our children won’t have to_.

Margravine Edmund fights in Margrave Gautier’s place.

But Margravine Edmund is not the head of House Gautier.

* * *

“They still say I can’t heft a lance at _all_ , but,” Sylvain wrinkles his nose, “at least they’re letting me cast spells again. Can you believe that? I’m excited about _casting spells_.”

“Like father like son,” Mercedes says, keeping her voice steady. She brushes hair back from his forehead, and he leans into her touch.

Sylvain’s health has improved even _he_ has noticed the contrast between the present and the past versions of him: one from the Lone Moon, one from the start of the Great Tree Moon. The predictable downside is he’s become more vocal about returning to the battlefield, with or without the still-damaged Lance of Ruin. The blacksmith works as fast as he can, but it’s delicate material and there’s only one of these Relics in the world.

Troops from Fhirdiad are on their way, and the Knights of Seiros have almost finished their preparations. But Marianne confesses the war has stagnated somewhat, and morale’s dropped these last weeks. They can’t follow Sreng too far into the icy highlands and wind up on the defensive more than the offensive. Many soldiers have been heard grumbling about forking over these territories to the Srengi and heading home, if that’s what Sreng wants.

And with Sylvain reading all that correspondence about his troops’ flagging enthusiasm without their general there… “Maybe I can just show up and wave a flag around,” he suggests now. “Be a little flashy, you know?”

“A perfect target.” Mercedes kisses his forehead now that her hair-petting has revealed it.

“Mm. That feels nice.”

Well, the healer _and_ Sylvain have agreed he’s feeling better, haven’t they? That he just needs to regain his strength, and some kissing should be fine, right?

They haven’t kissed in so _long_.

Mercedes brushes her lips against his forehead again, then the bridge of his nose, trailing her mouth over to one eyelid then the other, down his cheek…

Sylvain tilts his head, but he doesn’t need to guide her. Mercedes know where she wants to be, too. She keeps her kisses feather-soft, gentle, almost as they’re mere memories of touches, until she reaches his warm mouth and sucks, lightly, on his bottom lip.

Sylvain wraps his arms around her, tugs her close, and ‘gentle’ ceases to exist.

Mercedes slips her tongue into his mouth the second his lips part. He tangles his fingers in her long hair, nails raking her scalp, pushing her closer and closer and closer until she can hardly breathe anything but the air he gives her. She missed his taste, she loves his laugh, and she strokes her tongue along every warm part of his mouth that makes him shiver so she can remind herself and remind _him_ what it’s like to touch each other like this. How it feels when their smiles come together and how it hurts whenever they part.

“Sweetheart,” Sylvain finally pants, tapping her back. “You gotta—my chest—”

Mercedes jerks back right away. “Oh, did I hurt you? I’m so sorry!”

He laughs and she wants to fall into him all over again. “Not really, just…they told us I gotta…breathing, you know?” When he taps the left side of his chest, Mercedes remembers.

“I’m so sorry—”

“No, no, I said it was fine! But you’re right, um…” Another laugh, this one more self-conscious. Sylvain runs both his hands through his utterly wrecked hair, and Mercedes knows she hasn’t imagined his embarrassed flush. “I guess I really do gotta take it easy. At least until they…until I’m normal again. Like they said.”

Mercedes almost wants to tease him, but he just looks so morose. They’re at war. And their troops have no general. And she still has to tell him—

“Sylvain. I’m Margravine.”

His eyes go so soft and warm it breaks her heart in the best of ways. Sylvain plants his hand on her thigh where she’s perched next to him and strokes her with his thumb. Innocently. Sweetly. “Yeah. _My_ Margravine.”

During the war—the _other_ war—Mercedes had told their Professor how she always needed a gentle push, a reminder not to give in and let other people decide her fate. That she has things she wants to accomplish, too.

She can’t always demand encouraging pushes if she doesn’t ask for them, can she?

“And our people’s.” Mercedes pauses, watching Sylvain’s face as he processes. “And our soldiers’.”

The thumb stills. Sylvain does, too.

“Sylvain, I’m going to lead our troops in Sreng. Not in your stead, or…as a replacement, or because Amine is too young. I’m…the Margravine Gautier, and—”

“I’m the Margrave Gautier now,” Sylvain whispers. “I have to hold down the fort.”

* * *

Marianne’s reply oozes relief. Even a single Relic will help, despite a lack of a Gautier Crest-bearer in their midst. It’s still a powerful weapon, and Marianne assures her there are lance users who can be trusted not to mishandle its Crest stone. “And I could always use more friends in our ranks,” she adds in her letter.

The Church of Seiros and House Blaiddyd are also pleased to learn a head of House Gautier will join the fray once more. Their troops have long treks to prepare for. But it’s a week’s journey to Sreng-adjacent lands from Castle Gautier. It might even take less if Srengi troops have pushed even further south than feared.

Mercedes tries not to overwork herself during training the days before her departure, but it is…hard as her nerves get the better of her. She still can’t run fast and has given up the endeavor entirely. No, the longbow is probably the best skill she can hone.

“Mm, poor Mercedes,” Sylvain coos against the nape of her neck, “so tense with her _gorgeous_ shoulders—”

She tries not to laugh. “They _hurt_ , Sylvain.” He kisses his apology against the nubs of her spine, down and down, and even though she’s still in nicely covered in a nightgown, his touch _sears_ her skin.

“Does it hurt when I touch here?” His arms come up and ghost along the sides of her ribs. She shakes her head. “Here?” Higher now, just where her arms meet her shoulder blades.

“A little.”

She’s lying.

“Oh, whoops.” He knows. She can tell in the smile against her neck. “This better?”

Just below her breasts.

Mercedes fails to stifle her sigh and is rewarded for it: Sylvain cups her breasts in both hands and squeezes lightly.

The healer has granted his blessing. All is well.

Except that she departs for war in two days. Her first war without him nearby.

This time, when she shudders, Sylvain releases her and pecks a chaste kiss on her cheek. “Everything good?”

“Thank you,” she says, although she doesn’t quite know for what. Sylvain keeps tracing a line up and down her jaw with his mouth. “There’s something I’d like to tell you before I…leave.”

Sylvain’s mood blackens immediately and she loves him for it. “Mercedes, you’re gonna come back,” he says like a threat.

“I know, it’s just…it’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you for a long time.” Mercedes twists in his embrace so he can see her face. Rather, so she can see his. She wants to rush through the confession less to get it off her chest than to keep Sylvain’s eyes from darting around, but…

It’s been such a ridiculous thing to have kept hidden for so long. Sylvain deserves her patience.

“The Death Knight was my brother.”

Sylvain sucks in such a sharp gasp it’s a blessing his lung has mostly recovered. But the words that come out of his mouth are enough to make _Mercedes_ gasp: “Your brother was _Jeritza_?”

Mercedes goggles. “That’s…that’s what you’re focused on?”

Sylvain just puts his face in his hands and practically curls in on himself.

“Whatever is the matter.”

“Fuck. Fuck, can I tell you later?”

She _gapes_. “I’ve been keeping this to myself for so long,” she snaps, more furious with herself than him, “and you need me to…wait for _later_?”

“I said you’re coming back, right? Just…look forward to it?”

“Sylvain!”

“I don’t…Oh, fuck, Mercedes. You’re gonna hate me.”

“I’m not going to hate you!”

He just mumbles into his fingers, and Mercedes reaches out and shakes his wrists until he lets his hands drop.

To her utter _shock_ , Sylvain’s face is as red as his hair. “I tried to…we grabbed a drink after practice one day.”

Mercedes waits. Sylvain does not continue until she creeps closer and insists, “And? Is that what’s so shocking?”

“Mercedes, I…” He laughs and rubs the back of his neck, looking everywhere but at her. “I fucking…you know how I was back then! I tried to talk girls! With him! With Professor Jeritza!”

Sylvain, the love of her life and fire of her bed, is talking about adventures in… _women_ with her _little brother_ , some dim little bell in her mind alerts her, but she pushes past it. “Of course you did! Is it because he was your professor?”

“No, it’s…” Sylvain takes a deep, grounding breath. “I tried to, you know…talk to him. About you. As a…girl. As. You know. With…yeah, a girl. Which was you.”

Mercedes does not understand.

“And?”

Sylvain, if possible, grows redder. “I mean, no wonder he didn’t wanna talk about it, but…I guess it makes sense he hit me so hard at Fort Merceus,” he mumbles, almost to himself, but Mercedes _does not understand_.

“What for? You had a reputation, Sylvain; I doubt he was shocked!”

“ _Please_ don’t make me talk about it more,” Sylvain begs her, and something clicks. Not all of it, but enough.

“Were you…” Mercedes considers her words. “Detailed? In your conversation?”

“I mean, it was a one-sided conversation, and I wouldn’t use the word _detailed_ , really…”

“What _would_ you use?”

“I was embarrassed, okay? I kept pushing, I wanted to, you know, get him…you know, on the same page, just—”

“Sylvain.”

“I was graphic, okay?” Sylvain flops back on the pillow. “He left like, the second I started sugge—just getting too _detailed_ and I had to, you know, go back to my room to…finish the, uh, conversation myself. Fuck! I can’t believe myself! That was your fucking _brother_! I told your brother how—fuck! Sothis fucking _hates_ me!”

Sylvain, Mercedes remembers, does not remember much of Fort Merceus. He does not remember much because her brother, the Death Knight, had cracked his skull and concussed him so hard Mercedes had been terrified she’d lose him forever.

But her brother had also saved her life while she’d screamed for him to stay alive.

Mercedes shakes the memories out of her head. No, she rakes her fingernails down Sylvain’s chest—he’s allowed to sleep shirtless now that the weather is ‘warm’ in Gautier—and grins as his skin jumps. “Finish the _conversation_? With _yourself_?”

“Sweet fucking Sothis, Mercedes, you _know_ what I mean.”

She hums, delights in Sylvain’s tiny gasp. “I don’t think I do, no. Can you describe it for me? That _conversation_?”

“I am _not_ telling you what I told—”

Mercedes grimaces and covers Sylvain’s mouth with her free hand. “Yes, ah, please don’t. Just tell me what you were _finishing_.”

Despite the blush flooding his face, ears, and neck, Sylvain’s eyes twinkle. That’s the only warning she gets before she feels his tongue lick a stripe against her palm. She gasps and pulls away, but he traps her wrist in one of his, then tilts her head back to swipe another hot, slow lick against her neck.

“Maybe when you’re back,” he whispers into the dip between her collar bones. The fire nearly dies out of her then, but Sylvain wraps her hair around his own wrist and _tugs_ hard enough she forgets whatever he was saying. “Right now, I just want to feel you. I want to touch you. I want you so bad, I need to _touch_ you.”

Mercedes nods. He must feel it through every single strand of hair in his grip. But then the delicious prickliness is gone, and Sylvain leans back into his pillows, studying her with an intensity darker than the candlelight can chase away. He rubs her lower lip with his thumb, like he had her thigh not so long ago. Just far less innocently.

“Mercedes, do you want me?” he whispers, it misses the realm of ‘teasing’ so hard that Mercedes wants to spend the rest of the night convincing him.

“Let me show you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, sorry, the smut'll be next chapter because of aforementioned "silly outlining process" reasons.
> 
> Plus side: this means there's smut next chapter!


	15. Great Tree Moon, 1195 - Harpstring Moon, 1195

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello yes my life is exciting and dramatic and a challenge at times but I have all of you to make it cheerful! Thanks for the patience.
> 
> Don't forget to follow me on twitter ([NenalataWrites](https://twitter.com/NenalataWrites)) if you want to know about safe sex practices and are curious if I'm nice to people outside of replying to your really moving comments (spoiler: I'm not)!

Her name is beautiful in Sylvain’s mouth. Beautiful but loud, and girlish, uncharacteristic possessiveness makes Mercedes quiet him with her lips on his. Like his begging and gasps and pleas are secrets.

More like she doesn’t want the entire healing staff rushing in to check if Sylvain’s in pain. Still, that’s unlikely: Sylvain may be weak— _he lets her sweep her tongue inside his mouth like she’s staking a claim, lets her smooth the sweat over his chest with her fingers like she’s branding him_ —but he’s not in any pain. Mercedes bites and sucks damning red marks into his neck with a desperation that frightens her and all Sylvain does is sob her name.

“Don’t stop, no,” he whispers when she pulls away even for an instant. “Please.”

“I want to touch you everywhere,” she murmurs into his jugular, swiping her tongue and the barest hint of teeth along the strained tendons in his neck. Sylvain paws at her nightgown.

“Me too.” He sounds pained anyway. “Off, please take this off—”

Mercedes struggles out of the constricting cotton. Sylvain tries his best to help, he does, but their shared desperation and unacknowledged fear renders his efforts useless. He eventually settles back into the pillows, panting and sweating and burning his gaze into her body when she finally bares herself to him.

“Are—are you okay?” Mercedes manages to ask. She tosses her hair over her shoulder to get it out of the way, feeling her breasts sway with the movement. Sylvain curses instead of replying, so she repeats the question.

He’s so hard under her, even through his pants and the sheets. It takes everything within her not to _grind_ —

“My stamina’s gonna be shit. I’m so sorry,” Sylvain laughs, self-deprecation saturating the sentences.

“I know,” Mercedes giggles. She shifts and revels in the way his eyes roll back a little.

“You’re not helping.”

“I will, though.” She bends down, aware of his staring, and kisses the corner of his mouth. “I’ll take care of you. You’ll just take it easy.” She plans to kiss his mouth properly now, but yelps when he just bucks beneath her, the hard length of him pressing deliciously into her slit even through the sheets.

Sylvain looks extremely pleased with himself, if a little winded. She knows what joke he’s going to make about _easy_ or _hard_ or _taking it_ or something else tasteless and she’s in no mood to hear it. Instead, she palms him through the covers and musters as much scolding into her voice as she says, “ _I’ll_ take care of you.”

“Mm.” He runs his fingers up and down her bare thighs and pecks her on the lips between each word. “Okay. Okay, okay, okay.” Mercedes grips his jaw in both hands the last time he pulls back and licks the seam of his smiling mouth to keep him close.

She’s just begun to grind into him, the kiss deepening and dangerous, when she realizes Sylvain has sunk his nails into her rear and is trying to guide her rhythm, too. “I told you I’d take care of you,” she chastises him, sitting up even as he frantically tries to follow her.

“I need you,” is all he says. Mercedes twists her hair in both hands and casts a glance over her shoulder. Their toys and contraceptives are still upstairs, and having even a few little things would make it easier to keep him controlled and safe. As if sensing her thoughts, Sylvain wraps his arms around her waist. “No, please stay, I can’t stand it. I have you naked for _tonight_ and then—”

He cuts himself off before she can and buries his face in her breasts. “Just stay,” he whispers, and as he trails kisses and licks down the curves and grazes his teeth over her nipple, the tip of his tongue curling against her…

“I have an idea,” she gasps. “One—one moment—”

He does not give her a moment, and Mercedes doesn’t mind. Sylvain flicks his scorching gaze up at her as he draws her nipple with his teeth between his grinning lips, and it takes every ounce of common sense she possesses not to scream.

“Love you like this,” he groans when her hand almost slams the back of his head to bring him closer. “So needy for me. Love you, I—”

She wrenches herself free and moans as the cold air pricks her breast, wet from Sylvain’s hot mouth. “I have an idea,” she repeats. “Take off your pants.”

“I’m liking this idea already,” Sylvain laughs. Despite directing the order at him, Mercedes helps—better than he had with her clothes, at least. They peel back the sheets and slide his pants off. She plants kisses on the jut of his hipbone, the trail of hair below his navel, the tops of each thigh—a little softer than she’s used to. By the time they’ve freed him, Sylvain’s practically _leaking_ precum.

“Told you,” he sighs with an adorable blush Mercedes is quick to kiss.

“Here, look—” She reaches, and he lets her take his hand and bring it to her, slowly, down, and down—

“Fuck you’re fucking soaked oh fucking— _fucking_ sake—”

“You’re not even _really_ feeling me yet,” Mercedes laughs. Sylvain doesn’t take the bait, just stares at her slick glistening on his fingers. His wrist twitches and Mercedes latches on tighter before he can try and _taste_. “Here, try this.” She guides his hand to the insides of her thighs, smearing his wet fingers along her skin. “And again—”

“Yeah, got it,” Sylvain laughs more breathlessly than before. He groans when he dips inside her again. “Fuck, that’s hot.”

It’s such a struggle to keep her eyes open when Sylvain is doing nothing but staring at her like she’s the only thing in the world. “Is that enough?” Mercedes asks as he smooths her wet thighs one more time. He nods, shaky and impatient. “Okay. But let _me_ do the work, okay?”

“Got it, yeah, got it, I’ll be good.”

Mercedes swings her legs over his hips and slides herself up, up, dragging along his length for a shivery second that has Sylvain sobbing into the back of his hand. She rearranges herself quickly before his instincts can have him buck beneath her again, tightening her lubricated thighs around him. Not inside her, not completely, but Sylvain shudders and keeps himself between her thighs. He may be almost recovered, but _almost_ isn’t good enough. She’s just glad he won’t fight her on that.

“You feel so good,” Sylvain chokes out. Mercedes sees the muscles in his abdomen flex and pushes him down by the shoulders before he can even thrust.

“Let—let me,” she stammers. Sylvain just squeezes his eyes shut and, a heartbeat later, nods. Mercedes exhales, plants her elbows on either side of his face, kisses him to distract him, to love him, and begins to move.

He feels _good_.

The tip of him catches on her clit with every stroke. She’s wet everywhere, from sweat and from his precum and from her own slick and even a few tears of pleasure. Ecstasy coils searing hot and tight in her stomach faster than she anticipated, and she can’t help chasing it, speeding up and riding him harder than she can remember ever having done.

“A—ah—”

Words mean _nothing_. Sylvain watches her use him, red lips parted and shining. Her gasps are even louder than his shallow intakes of breath. Mercedes presses hot kisses along his forehead, cheeks, the side of his mouth, unable to decide if she wants to keep tasting him, _Sylvain_ , or if she wants to watch him _watching_ her. It’s pleasure, it’s everything, it’s the hot slick slide of him against her and the hot heavy-lidded brown eyed stare on her breasts, her face, their bodies where they’re not _quite_ joined, oh, it feels perfect, it’s Sylvain beneath her and she wants…she wants…

“Mercedes, look at you, fucking look at you, sweet fucking _Sothis_ —”

She wants to watch him.

“Fuck, that’s it, just like that, sweetheart, _fuck_ yes—"

She wants to watch—

Mercedes screams and comes.

“Sorry,” she’s gasping hardly before her legs even stop quivering. “Sorry, I was supposed to—”

“It’s fine,” Sylvain grunts, scooping his hands under her to _lift_ and _grind_ and Mercedes comes back to her senses.

“No.” She shoves his hands away, and before Sylvain can break her heart by looking mortified, bends over him and licks a kiss into his mouth. “Just…just don’t come inside if you don’t want me to go upstairs to fetch everything, okay?”

Sylvain turns bright red. An odd response for a man who, not moments ago, was ready to ignore all rhyme and reason for the sake of meeting his wife’s climax at the same time. “Um,” he says, and then does not elaborate.

Mercedes kisses him again, on the cheek this time. Her breathing is still labored but not as much as she would have expected. Sylvain trails his fingers along her newly muscled abdomen, almost as if—

_Oh_. No, he’s not reading her thoughts and thinking about how disciplined her training has been. Mercedes laughs into the sweaty curls of his hair. “Yes, on me is fine.”

“Thank all that’s sweet and holy,” Sylvain mumbles beneath her. He nips the side of her breast before she can remind him he should thank _her_. “I don’t want to have an awkward conversation with the infirmary maid tomorrow.”

“You’ll have to tell her to wash the sheets anyway,” Mercedes reminds him, but he just pinches her to shut her up. He reaches for himself, but Mercedes gets there first, stroking him back to hardness.

“Yeah, but sweat is different from cum. C’mere, sweetness. Let me feel you. I need—”

She does, too. Not that she’ll say it. “I’m going to hold you down, okay?” she whispers, arranging herself again over his hips, but lower, spreading her thighs directly over his length.

“ _Please_.”

Mercedes pins his wrists to the bed and sinks down on him in one smooth go.

“I _love_ you,” Sylvain gasps through a cracked voice, more air than sound. His legs tense beneath her and Mercedes tightens her grip, both around his wrists and around _him_.

“Be good,” she says, rising up, and sinks down again deeper. Sylvain babbles something she takes to mean acquiescence. Because now he lies there, _easy_ and _hard_ and _taking her_ , she doesn’t joke, letting her body pleasure him, letting her words whispered in his ear soothe him.

“ _Perfect_ ” is the only comprehensible word that escapes his lips once Mercedes finds a rhythm that works for them both. And then, like he’s relieved to have found the gift of language again, it’s all Sylvain can say. “Perfect,” he moans as she rotates her hips against him in quick, small circles. “Perfect,” she speeds up, “perfect, fuck, perfect,” he’s remembered how to curse when she pulls his arms higher to keep him from breaking free like she can sense his fraying control, “fuck, _Mercedes_ ,” her name, repeated over and over, pitch rising—

Sylvain’s eyes snap open, and the curses and her name— _fuck, Mercedes!_ —become desperate. Mercedes pulls off him fast, _almost_ not fast enough. Sylvain instantly spends himself across her stomach, gasping and moaning and trying to wrest himself free of her restraints to hold her. Mercedes swaps her grip to one hand pushing both his wrists into the mattress, using the other to keep stroking him, cooing senseless praises the entire while.

And the entire while. And to keep stroking him. By the time white has stopped dribbling from the tops of her thighs onto the— _oops_ , the sheets, tears trickle down Sylvain’s cheeks.

“S-sorry, it’d been a…a while. I feel…like I’m a kid again,” he finally laughs between heaving breaths. Mercedes lets go of him completely with both hands and kisses the tear tracks away. She knows she's not imagining his nose wrinkling against her cheek. “Saints, I can fucking _feel_ myself on you. Gross, huh?”

Mercedes rears back to observe the damage. It…is indeed a lot. And they’ve had worse. “It’s normal,” she says. “Was this the first time you’ve…”

Sylvain wipes a hand over his face. “I mean, I guess? It’s not like jacking off was on my mind while my ribs healed…” He splays his fingers and observes the damage he did to her between the gaps. Mercedes can’t see his expression in its entirety, yet she has the sneaking suspicion he looks _very_ proud of himself anyway. Before she can tease him, he groans and drops his hand again. “Ugh, sorry, should’ve warned you faster. Maybe there’d have been…I don’t know. Less? I don’t know. Did I get you?”

Mercedes smiles. She knows what he means, but… “Hm, maybe,” she says, waiting for him to look at her. She dips two fingers inside herself, scooping up a mix of their—well, it’s _mostly_ her—and trails it up over herself, up her stomach to her navel, catching as much of his spend as she can. Sylvain watches, slack-jawed, while she brings it to her mouth. White disappears onto her tongue. Bitter as it is, more than usual, she plays it up, closing her eyes and moaning around her own fingers stuck farther back than necessary.

Sylvain is back to wordless awe when she reopens her eyes. Mercedes grins and flicks her tongue over her bottom lip for good measure, and that shakes him back to himself. “Who even _are_ you?” he asks hoarsely.

“Someone who loves you a lot,” Mercedes says, a little more choked up with emotion than she expected. _No, not now_ , _keep yourself together_. She glances down at the rest of the… _white_ on her body. “But I’m not getting the rest. It was really quite bitter this time, you know.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Sylvain sighs. “Thanks for the sacrifice, General Mercedes.”

“Don’t talk like that,” Mercedes says softly, masking her fear, and when Sylvain apologizes and actually offers to change the sheets first, she knows he’s masking his, too.

* * *

“I’m someone who loves you a lot, too.”

Mercedes looks over her shoulder from the infirmary laundry basket. Sylvain hasn’t returned to bed, but he has put his pants back on. It makes it easier to pay attention to the sincerity exuding from his posture.

She smiles and finishes lacing up her nightgown bodice. “I know.”

Sylvain holds out his hands, and she joins him by the side of the bed, letting him pretend to check the ties on her nightgown as an excuse to touch her. Gentle, loving, careful. “You’ve been keeping that to yourself a while,” he says quietly. Heat rushes to Mercedes’s cheeks like she’s a teenager.

“W-well, you too,” she objects. She’s surprised when Sylvain just laughs and buries his face in her neck.

“No, I mean…” She feels the smile fade from his lips. “Your brother. The Death Knight.”

She latches onto his shoulders immediately, inexplicably fighting tears. Perhaps it’s the guilt. Perhaps it’s the relief. Perhaps it’s the _shame_ , the feeling that she should have told him so long ago, it’s—

The smile’s back against her neck, and it’s sad, yes, but different somehow. Sylvain’s voice is equally relieved when he says, “Thanks. I’m…really glad I earned your trust. Thanks for telling me.”

_Earned your trust_?

Mercedes loses reason and logic and squeezes him. Dimly, she’s aware he swears in surprise, but he doesn’t push her away or object. No, Sylvain just wraps his arms around her, too.

“You never needed to earn it,” Mercedes whispers. The words get caught up in tears and she repeats it just in case: “You never needed to earn my trust. You always had it.”

Sylvain says nothing, not even when he certainly feels her sudden tears on his neck.

“I was scared,” Mercedes finally admits. “I was scared you’d…”

What had she been scared of?

“Hey.” Sylvain tugs the bottom of her hair, almost playfully, and Mercedes lets him wiggle out of her too-tight hug. He doesn’t go far, though. Just enough to smile, still close enough to kiss. “I know all about shitty brothers, believe me. But yours…” He shakes his head—there’s a scar there, faint and covered by his hair, but Mercedes is always too painfully aware of how he got it—and adds, “I think your brother…well, it sounds like he was as deserving of your love as anyone could be.” A rueful smile, and the predictable addendum: “No one really is, though. No one deserves your love.”

“No one deserves yours,” Mercedes says immediately, because it’s better than saying _thank you_. And certainly better than another apology she knows he won’t understand, an apology she doesn’t want him to understand, an apology she finally knows she doesn’t need to give.

“But when you two, ah, spoke, can you—”

“I’m _not_ telling you the details!”

* * *

“Are you cutting your hair?”

Putting down the sewing scissors, Mercedes looks into her vanity mirror to find her son peeking around the corner into her dressing room. He’s wearing his finest clothes, spring cloak pinned with the gold Crest of Gautier and his blond hair neatly combed back.

She wonders if he dressed up to say goodbye on his own, or if Sylvain had asked him to. Not trusting her voice, she nods. Amine takes that as invitation to join her by her vanity. He strokes the long tresses thoughtfully, humming just as he did as a baby.

“Why?”

“My hair’s too long for a bow,” she explains. “I don’t want it getting caught in my quiver.”

It likely wouldn’t be a problem, but Mercedes has been filled with anxiety since the moment she told Sylvain she was leaving. At least this specific anxiety is easy to solve.

“I like your hair. It's just like mine.” Amine keeps petting her, and Mercedes closes her eyes, memorizing the feel of his small fingers gently untangling knots. “Can I cut your hair for you?”

Surprised, Mercedes straightens in her chair and sees his earnest expression in the mirror. A standard Amine expression, except his jaw is set like Sylvain’s when he’s made an important decision, his mouth an imperious line that straddles the border between ‘resolute’ and ‘nervous.’

“Okay, Mina. Short as you can,” she says. She hands her son the scissors, and Amine gets to work on the worst haircut she’s ever received.

Once all those long locks of hair lie scattered along the vanity table and dressing room floor, both Mercedes and Amine eye each other’s teary expressions in the mirror. Her hair is shorter than it ever has been, even shorter than Ingrid’s during the Imperial war. It’s uneven and choppy and Mercedes hates how necessary it was and loves her son for doing it.

“Do you think I can get your hair back to normal if I keep these until you’re home?” Amine asks, pointing at her lost locks. “With white magic, I mean. If I studied hard enough. If I helped.”

Mercedes has…never considered that before, come to think. “You won’t be able to get these back,” she tells him, holding a dead, cut strand between her fingers. “But I should think some spells to stimulate hair growth might be worthwhile, darling. It’ll be something fun I can look forward to trying with you when I come home!”

Two more finely-dressed reflections join them in the mirror to make four watery smiles behind silver and glass.

“You made your mother look even more beautiful, Mina-baby,” Sylvain tells their son while Solaina reaches up to play with the ragged ends of her hair. Amine sniffles, Mercedes and Sylvain hold their arms open at the same time, and their children burrow into their embraces to cry.

* * *

The journey to the war front passes quickly, yes, but Mercedes learns just as quickly how different being a soldier is than she remembers. Perhaps what’s different is her station. The cook calls for her to stand in the front of the dinner line. She’s offered the first bathwater. She is not Mercedes but _Lady Gautier_ or _Margravine_ or simply _my lady_ for the new recruits of common descent who are terrified of addressing a noble incorrectly.

Her insistences to treat her like the rest of the soldiers fall on deaf ears. They nod, eager to please, and say “Of course, my lady.” Mercedes wonders how Sylvain was able to achieve such camaraderie with his troops, wonders if it has anything to do with being born and bred and raised to command an army.

No. Birth doesn’t mean anything here. Mercedes can learn— _has_ learned to be an equal, even if she's not as naturally charming. She doesn’t need to wait or given permission to be treated just like all the rest. She walks when her horse is tired and doesn’t accept anyone’s offer to swap with theirs unless she can tell they’re saddle sore. She sets up camp and fetches firewood—well, _tries_ to fetch firewood. The soldier accompanying her as the north spring air gets chillier finally laughs and plucks the axe straight from her grip. “Maybe you can shoot a few tree branches down for us. My lady,” he adds hastily, gesturing to her bow. But Mercedes only laughs, and while the formality stays the rest of their march, hope buoys her along even as they weave through scorched soil and past razed villages.

And corpses. Many of them. They detour when they need to avoid those too-fresh battlefields and wind up arriving at the Edmund and Gautier base camp two days later than their week-and-a-half arrival date.

It’s enormous. Nestled in a small valley between the freezing hills of what used to be southern Sreng, the clanging of hammers on anvils or shoes on horse hooves muffle Mercedes’s entire battalion’s heavy bootsteps as they approach. Scouts they’d encountered—fortunately, both parties had recognized each other before too much of a scuffle had occurred with only one archer mildly injured from a fire spell—had run back to camp ahead of them, so it’s with relief and cheer that the exhausted-looking sentries greet them.

“Margravine Edmund’s tent is in the west of camp, Margravine Ed—uh, Gautier, Margravine Gautier,” one guard answers her question, stumbling through the repetitive title. Mercedes smiles and thanks him. Marianne, it seems has endeared herself to the soldiers just as well as Sylvain had.

It also seems she has not spent much time at her tent since the last battle. She’s not there when a lieutenant shows her battalion where they can set up their cots. The next logical location, Mercedes decides once she's alone, would be the medical tent.

She doesn’t have to ask more than two grimy soldiers until she gets coherent directions to the tent. No titles are bestowed upon her. No one recognizes her. More the better, at least for now, but _morale_ …

“Mercedes! Thank the Goddess you’re safe!”

Mercedes finds herself enveloped in a tight embrace reeking of something sharp and medicinal. Shocked, she hugs—hugs!—Marianne back, who squeezes her again for good measure. The other margravine is positively beaming when she finally releases her. Not even an imitation of Sylvain’s smile: her very own one of sheer relief.

“I was so worried!” Marianne sighs. She bows her head and mumbles a brief prayer of thanks Mercedes can hardly hear. “I…I did get the reports from the scouts, of course, but I couldn’t help but fear…” She trails off, the relief fading from her voice as soon as it had arrived.

Yesterday, Mercedes realizes, is a day Marianne would have had to write back to Gautier, the Crown, and the Church. Yesterday, Marianne must have sent word that Mercedes had not yet arrived.

“I’ll send a new missive today alerting everyone I’m safe and sound,” Mercedes assures her, watching the tension leak from Marianne’s shoulders. At least a little.

“Safe for now,” Marianne agrees. “But really, Mercedes, it’s such a blessing to have you here! Your troops will be so relieved, and as for me…Well, I’m really, ah, embarrassed to admit, but we’re overwhelmed in the medical—”

“Marianne, please. Mercedes has barely stepped inside our little slice of paradise and you’re already putting her to work. Don’t you think she deserves a rest first? Oh, and hello, Mercedes. Welcome to hell.” The last sentence, punctuated by a yawn, alerts Mercedes to the speaker’s identity even if the voice had not. She whirls on Linhardt with a cry of delight.

“Oh! I had no idea you’d be here!”

“Neither had I, but such is life,” Linhardt grumbles. Marianne twists her fingers nervously by Mercedes’s side, interrupting him before he can _hopefully_ explain what he’s doing here.

“W-well, yes, Mercedes, I’m sure you must be tired. But I…well, if I could, if you wouldn’t mind if I showed you very quickly the, ah, the magnitude of—”

Mercedes shakes herself. “Of course. Please, lead the way.”

The pallor of Linhardt’s cheeks take on a bit of a green tint as he follows the two of them without being asked. “You’re going to wish you’d taken the rest first,” he cautions her. “I know I did when I first—”

“You, ah, might want to take a deep breath and hold it,” Marianne interrupts again, and without even waiting for Mercedes to consider obeying, tosses the flap open for the three—two, Linhardt remains outside—of them to enter.

It _is_ hell.

The medical tent is large, larger than what most of their average campaigns had been during the beginning of the Imperial war. But suffering soldiers and harried mages have almost no room to breathe themselves, so cramped are they. Buckets of collected blood line the edges dangerously close to clean bandage rolls. Surgical tools lie in haphazard piles by each cot requiring their use or simply have clear space. Groans of pain in various pitches and volumes and intensities vibrate in the air, which…which…

It’s the worst part, the air. Mercedes can hardly breathe through the stench. Was it always this terrible?

“It’s been like this since the last skirmish,” Marianne whispers. Her nose doesn’t even twitch; she must be so accustomed to this already, Mercedes realizes through her delirium of overstimulation. “We were already quite, ah, occupied. Understaffed, too, though...maybe that's not the right word. But I won’t be able to lead my own battalions until we’ve healed enough people here, or they…”

_Or._

“Right,” Mercedes tries to say and nearly chokes on the clogged air. Goddess, has she really grown so weak in noble life? She can’t remember a time being this sensitive to the sight and smell of war, no matter how horrible. It was never _pleasant_ to be sure, but she’s used to it. Maybe not on quite this scale, and that's certainly part of it…

Marianne’s brow crinkles. “Mercedes, forgive me. Are you too tired? It was…I think it was inconsiderate of me to—”

“No! No,” Mercedes forces herself to repeat quieter when Marianne flinches. “No, I’ll become reacclimated. I’ve…grown soft. Let’s get started.”

Marianne titters, nerves visibly easing once again. “Thank you, Mercedes. It…it’s really good to have you here.”

And although yes, Linhardt was right, it’s hell, it’s _hell_ , she’s always hated watching people die and she hasn’t seen someone choke their last breath around a complicated hex in so long and had hoped to never see it again…

“They have at least one battalion of dark mages,” Marianne informs her as the cadaver team gently rolls the soldier’s corpse in tarp. Mercedes cleans the newly vacated cot in silence. She’s learned she can focus better when she doesn’t have to speak in this horrible air. “They’ve been giving us the most trouble other than the archers. Well…you would know that, I suppose.”

A screaming soldier with his leg missing below the knee gets laid onto the cot by a grungy comrade seconds after Mercedes’s equally-grungy handkerchief leaves the mattress, and the conversation drops. It's hell, yes, but at least she can be _useful_ here.

Mercedes has no idea what time it is when Marianne says they should go. “Thank you,” Marianne tells her as she escorts her outside the tent. The fresh air—well, fresh for a war camp—nearly bowls Mercedes over, and all she can manage is a weak nod. “I think we’ve earned dinner, haven’t we?”

_Dinner_. That’s what does it.

Mercedes turns to the right, sees Linhardt seated on a bench and reading a book, turns to the left, and empties her stomach of the little it contains onto the cold soil. Marianne yelps then hurries to assist her, rubbing her back as Mercedes heaves again.

“I’m sorry,” Mercedes gasps, louder than Marianne’s own apologies. “I’m sorry, it’s been quite some time—”

She bends over again. “I tried to warn you,” Linhardt’s disapproving voice chastises her from over his book. “I vomited when I went in there for the first time, too.”

“Are you okay?” Marianne frets again, but Mercedes waves her off even as Marianne fixes her with a critical eye. She’s about to protest that she really is feeling better when a new voice pipes up by the medical tent.

“Lin, you vomit _each_ _time_ you go in there.”

“True enough. I’m more useful out here, anyway.”

That voice…

Mercedes wipes her mouth with her sleeve. _Elegant, Mercedes_ , she can almost hear her mother-in-law sneer. But no, that woman’s voice isn’t as important as this woman’s voice, which—

Dorothea Arnault is smiling at her, sad and nervous, from over Linhardt’s shoulder, previously hidden by his book. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” she asks gently when Mercedes finds herself unable to speak. “Congratulations on your marriage, Margravine Gautier.”

Enbarr was so, so long ago.

“Mercedes,” Mercedes croaks. She clears her throat. “Do you remember? My name’s Mercedes.”

Dorothea’s smile grows and Linhardt returns to his book with a bored sigh. “Of course I remember. Sylvain wouldn’t shut up about you. I’m Dorothea.”

Mercedes thinks of Ingrid and wants to cry. “Of course I remember you, too.”


	16. Harpstring Moon, 1195 - Blue Sea Moon, 1195

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO MY LIFE IS EXTREMELY STRESSFUL
> 
> if you follow my twitter you know it's been a wee bit of a Time, but ALSO that I've never planned to abandon you :D I was worried this was running too long for people's reading comfort (especially given the wait), so I ran a quick poll to see if people wanted two quick updates but shorter chapters, or one long update and no further updates til after the new year. Two quick updates won. See ya soon!
> 
> Reminders for violence and soldiers dying cuz we're at war.

Dorothea has aged. That’s Mercedes’s first thought. Jawline a bit sharper, waist a little thicker; she must not have been here at base camp long.

Her second thought is how very relieved she is by this fact.

Her third thought is that her stomach continues to roil despite the scrapes of exhausted hunger scrabbling against its edges.

Linhardt breaks the tension her and Dorothea’s twin blank smiles have created by getting to his feet and yawning hard enough Mercedes hears his jaw crack. “Well, you two appear to have some catching up to do over dinner,” he points out needlessly. “I’m sure the cook’s whipped up some unusual gruel in your honor, Margravine von Martritz.”

“Gautier,” Mercedes corrects him, voice cracking. “Margravine Gautier.”

“Same thing. Marianne? Will you join me?”

Marianne, who has observed the entire exchange since Mercedes’s mortifying sickness in silence, shakes herself. “Y-yes,” she replies. “Yes, let’s show the Margravine to the mess tent.”

She skitters ahead to join Linhardt, already strolling away. Mercedes stares after them, too aware of Dorothea, motionless on the bench.

“I can’t imagine you’re hungry after… that,” Dorothea finally pipes up, gesturing at Mercedes’s own ‘mess’ without looking at it. Mercedes shakes her head.

“Just nerves, I think. Shall we? I’d hate to be rude to the cook.” She braves a weak smile, not quite looking at Dorothea, either.

She hears Dorothea laugh, though. “Lin doesn’t always mean ‘unusual’ as a good thing, my lady.”

Mercedes winces as Dorothea rises. “Please,” she says once they begin trailing after Marianne and Linhardt’s distant figures. “Call me Mercedes.”

* * *

It is indeed… unusual gruel. “We must be waiting on a supply convoy,” Dorothea sighs once the privileges of rank get them bowls of a yellowish substance not long after they arrive. “The Srengi army has taken to guerilla tactics as of late. I’m worried the caravan ran into trouble.”

Mercedes raises her brows and stirs her gruel. “Has that been a worse problem than usual? I thought Sylvain had rerouted their paths.” Finally taking the Archbishop’s advice. He hadn’t even complained, which had been… refreshing, if unfamiliar.

“They’ve got a good position in the foothills. The Srengi, I mean. Their vantage point has been… inconvenient, to say the least.”

Mercedes licks the tip of her spoon, ignores her stomach’s involuntary shudder, and forces the rest down. Tough, chewy meat massages her molars, gamey but fresh. An army marches on its stomach, Annie’s father always says. It may not taste good, but whatever this stew consists of fills her with energy after each successful swallow. Each, however, is slow-going. “Have you been here long, then?”

In Mercedes’s peripheral vision, Dorothea shakes her head, idly stirring her own gruel. Mercedes considers warning her she suspects it’ll taste worse cold, then decides Dorothea likely knows that better than her. “I’ve… made myself scarce in the public eye, you could say,” she says, a rueful smile coloring her tone. “Lin tried convincing me no one would recognize me or object. And he was right in the end. Selfish of me, I suppose, to think I was more important than I am.”

Mercedes remains quiet, using another spoonful of gruel as her excuse.

At Enbarr, she’d been the one to shoot an arrow into Dorothea’s back.

She wonders if Dorothea knows.

“Lin found me,” Dorothea murmurs, “surrounded by Kingdom corpses I’d made.”

Mercedes jerks her head up to see Dorothea smiling at her uneaten stew. “At Enbarr. Maybe you weren’t actually wondering,” she continues. “and I simply can’t tell. I’m still too selfish to look at your face.”

Mercedes forces a final swallow of suddenly-tasteless meat down her throat. She reaches her hand across the splintery table. Calluses riddle her palm and fingertips. “I’m selfish too,” she says. Dorothea, startled from whatever unhappy thoughts plague her, reaches back quick as thunder, quick as a spell. Her own hand has been roughened by labor and spellwork. Mercedes never knew what it felt like before now.

“Thank you,” Dorothea says, and their eyes meet for a split second before Dorothea laughs and pulls away. “I don’t really know what I’m thanking you for, but…”

Mercedes doesn’t know either. She thinks of the arrow she’d nocked, her relief when Dorothea had fallen, her shame when Ingrid had cried. Had Linhardt healed the wound fast enough? Or is there still a puncture scarred into Dorothea’s skin, underneath her long auburn curls?

“Anyway, no,” Dorothea sighs, breaking her morose train of thought, “I left Castle Goneril a few days after Sylvain got himself exploded.” She sips her stew and makes a face, unable to see Mercedes flinch. “I’ve been taking care of Hil. She can be insufferable, you know?”

Mercedes flinches again. Her spoon clatters into her bowl; she hadn’t even realized she’d finished her gruel. “Whatever is the matter with poor Hilda?” she asks, stricken, but Dorothea only rolls her eyes.

“’Poor Hilda’ is the most irritating pregnant woman I’ve ever dealt with,” she says. “I wouldn’t feel too sorry for her spoiled self. She’s lucky I’m—”

“Hilda? _Pregnant_?”

Dorothea fixes her with a confused frown. “Don’t act so surprised. It’s the fourth time. _Last_ time, I hope. For all our sakes.”

“ _Fourth time_?”

“Oh, dear,” Dorothea smiles, pity evident in its shine. “Have you really been that cooped up in your freezing Kingdom?”

Mercedes opens her mouth to object. When she’s not home swapping cold glares and icier smiles with her mother-in-law, she’s traveling between Gautier, Fhirdiad, and Garreg Mach. And since Castle Gautier can feel more like a prison than home, especially in its long winters, she’s found excellent ways to train in the forests just outside. Sylvain never joins her, claiming distaste for them, and there’s something pleasant to be said for having those hours to herself save a small retinue of guards. Sometimes Annie and Felix visit, or Ashe and Dedue when possible. Their Majesties and Their Highnesses have unfortunately only visited once. The Archbishop, however, has been their most frequent guest of late—

Mercedes now realizes she always seems to play the host and never the guest. Fhirdiad and the monastery… probably don’t count.

“Well, they haven’t written us,” she defends herself. It sounds weak to her own ears. “I… suppose I could have written them first.”

To her surprise, Dorothea waves a dismissive hand. “I was teasing; you don’t need to look so depressed about it. They were always out adventuring when they weren’t in Hevring with us— with me and Lin, I mean. Practically impossible to track down. It was only when Holst got wind he had three tiny nephews exploring the world that he chased them all himself. And when he caught up and saw Hil pregnant _again_ , well… You can imagine he practically dragged her back to Goneril by the pigtails.”

Mercedes has never met Holst and vaguely recalls Hilda mentioning him a few times. Sylvain said once he was terrified of the man and dreaded the day they’d have to meet at court, but that day has yet to arrive. “I’ll imagine my very best.”

Her awkwardness goes unnoticed; now that Dorothea is on the topic, she’s too impassioned to relinquish it. Hilda is, Mercedes is unsurprised to learn, demanding and whiny and lazy on a good day and a spoiled brat on a bad one; honestly, if Dorothea hadn’t been there, she’s sure Hil would’ve driven the entire castle staff to mutiny, or maybe the entire castle _town_ to rebellion. Caspar, of course, is no help; he’s always off taking their sons on adventures which always spark Holst into challenging him to duels for endangering his precious, utterly innocent nephews, who, by the way, are _exactly_ as rambunctious as Dorothea— or anyone, really— would expect. At this point, Dorothea’s certain Holst is just looking for excuses to fight his brother-in-law, since no one else really measures up in skill or combat prowess, and of _course_ Caspar’s only too eager to accept. That leaves Dorothea as babysitter for both the three Goneril children _and_ the Goneril mother-to-be-four-times-over. They’re loud and obnoxious and delight in spiking her tea with bugs, especially since they learned Dorothea has no qualms in rehousing those same bugs in their hair or down their gaudy, expensive tunics. Meanwhile, Hil lounges about all day complaining about her feet and cravings and back and sex life and libido and Dorothea, for one, is absolutely sick of it. Thank goodness the baby’s finally out and done with, though of _course_ Caspar was still out adventuring or whatever and probably still doesn’t know Hil named the baby without him, ‘Kallani Rose, because I’m so _bored_ of Caspar insisting we give them non-cute warrior-y names!’

Finally, when Dorothea’s gruel has lost its steam, so has Dorothea herself. Mercedes restrains a smile. “You sound very fond of them,” she dares to say. Dorothea pinches her lips like she’s restraining a smile, too.

“Lin and I aren’t having children,” she says, “so at least Caspar and Hil _kindly_ picked up on our slack.”

Mercedes wants to make some mild joke about Linhardt slacking off in all disciplines, it seems, but Dorothea changes the subject to Mercedes’s children she’s heard about. Mercedes understands the topic is no longer up for discussion.

* * *

_To the inimitable Lady Mercedes von Martritz, as gracious as she is beautiful,_

_Glad you arrived safely. Hope Macuille’s less of a nightmare than I left it, but I doubt it. Be safe, my love._

_As for me, I’ve been dreaming of you. Do you want to hear all about it? They’re not the sort of dreams you want to leave your nightgown on for, trust me._

A Sylvain-style winky face drawn to the side, its fingers and tongue stuck out in a crass, obvious gesture.

_Hold off on that, though. I’ll give you the unsexy updates first._

_First, Amine’s drawing is improving. Really quickly, actually. It’s kind of horrible; he’s started illustrating the ghost stories now. Why do you choose_ those _as bedtime stories, Mercedes? Why? Why do you do this to me? I’m the one stuck reading them, because “Mother tells me them, and you love Mother, so I’m sure you’ll love this!” What am I supposed to say to_ that _? Anyway, I’ve included his latest masterpiece, per his request, so at least that one’s_ your _problem now. It’s a grisly one, too. Don’t worry; it’s in the smaller letter that should’ve arrived with this one. Doesn’t accompany my dream journal._

Yet another of Sylvain’s signature winky faces, though its expression isn’t quite as lewd as before.

_Second, Solaina’s trying to convince me to let her take up sword training. I’m not… thrilled about saying yes, so I figured I’d ask you first. I know you’re not big on that Faerghus tradition in the first place. I think she’s just bored right now, and since the healers have me in the training room more with you gone, her nurse brings her down to watch Amine and I train together. Should I tell the nurse to stop? She’s only three…_

Mercedes has a firm answer to _that_ before the paragraph even trails off with an uncertain, thick blob of ink from Sylvain’s hesitant quill pausing on the last period.

_Third, well… This is the hardest one to say._

Another heavy splotch of the nib sticking to the parchment. When the sentences continue, Sylvain’s script is thinner, like he stopped to sharpen it.

_Mother had a bad fall the night after you left. Tripped down the stairs from the family quarters. Broke her hip._

The neat script speeds up, letters looping together in a somehow-legible rush.

 _It’s good we have so many healers around, I guess. But she’s refused to let any of them into her own chambers; she was furious when they sedated her so they could move her there and hasn’t allowed them back. I mean, I get it; that spell’s pretty brutal and it’s weird having hours (or in my case, days) of your life just_ gone _like that. But I’m at the point I’m considering pulling rank for the first time and fucking_ ordering _her to let them in. Or just ordering the servants to barge in. Whichever. Maybe both._

Sylvain does not seem to remember the night when he _did_ do both. When he sent his mother to bed in the middle of dinner like she was a child throwing a tantrum.

Mercedes remembers it.

 _It’s selfish of me, especially since she only let_ me _in once to see her, but… It makes me feel weird. I’ve never thought of my mother as_ weak _before._

Mercedes has.

_Okay, so! That’s the news from over here! You have my explicit permission to remove your nightgown now._

No winky doodle, but there is an arrow pointing to the next page. Another sentence is scribbled below.

_And speaking of ‘explicit…’_

* * *

The letters from Sylvain and Amine had arrived later than they had been written, as the supply caravan had elected to change its route following the ambush on the caravan Dorothea had mentioned that first night.

Sylvain’s birthday has come and gone. A scant few weeks from now is Solaina’s; the castle staff might be already preparing for it. Mercedes, meanwhile, has fought in two skirmishes and fended off one attempted siege on nearby Castle Macuille.

That siege was where she had finally seen the man who had nearly killed her husband.

“That’s him,” the lieutenant of her battalion told her before she could ask. Mercedes had her archers on a hill above the ragged treeline. It wasn’t much of a hiding place, but the elevation had its advantages and the Srengi army had bigger fish to fry. They threw themselves at the castle walls as Mercedes and her troops peppered arrows into their bodies.

Mercedes hadn’t replied. The man in question, even had he not towered above his own troops, gripped an enormous morningstar, so much worse than the healer’s description of ‘hammer,’ whose spikes glinted even brighter than the weapon’s namesake.

_“The left side of his ribcage is broken. His lung collapsed. Thankfully, the healers at the base camp were able to save his arm.”_

“He leads their whole army,” the lieutenant continued. “But even if we took him out, they’re determined enough that I’m not sure such a loss would even end the war.”

Her lieutenant was probably right. The Srengi had lost that battle, retreating once the first regiment from the Kingdom Royal Army joined the fray. They’d left their wounded to the throatslitters, left their corpses to rot. It was Dorothea’s white mage battalion who got stuck with cleanup, ensuring disease didn’t spread to the castle or town or their own camp.

Tonight, memories of that battle only two nights ago haunt Mercedes’s slumber. She doesn’t read Sylvain’s ‘explicit’ description of his dream, choosing to fold it up and tuck it under her cot pillow for another night. Her stomach feels too queasy for that. She leaves her nightgown on and wills herself to sleep.

In the morning, Linhardt finds her outside the latrine, still quaking from her upended stomach.

“Didn’t make it in time, I see,” Linhardt shakes his head, lips downturned in what Mercedes might call ‘pity’ if she didn’t know better. “In more ways than one, eh?”

She freezes. “No,” she protests, his meaning trickling into her ears like sludge. “No, I’m simply… the siege, I’m unused to all the—”

Linhardt ignores her and outstretches his hands, the tips of his fingers overlapping each other. Asking permission in the only way he seems able. Mercedes lets him approach, holding her breath trapped in her lungs as if they don’t all wake up pungent and unclean. Linhardt rests his hands on her stomach, hardly touching the fabric of her nightgown, his fingertips searing through it with the spell.

White magic reacts to everything alive. To everything a living being can create.

Despair overwhelms Mercedes’s senses as the spell sparks. Reacts. Fades.

“You shouldn’t be on the battlefield,” Linhardt tells her immediately. Dispassionate as ever, that Linhardt, save those words reeking of concern.

“I must be,” she says just as quickly. “For our troops’ sake, the morale—”

“I don’t have the energy to argue about such a thing,” Linhardt cuts her off, tone as close to impatient as she’s ever heard. “It was a healer’s suggestion, not a commander’s. I certainly can’t _order_ you, Margravine von Martritz.”

Mercedes cannot speak. She doesn’t have the energy, either. The tightness around the corners of Linhardt’s mouth grow tighter. “Well, whatever. It’s your decision, not mine,” he says to her silence, turning his back on her in the direction of the mess tent. “And it’s not my child, either.”

* * *

As it turns out, it _isn’t_ her decision. Srengi forces ambush the base camp that afternoon.

Alarm horns clang seconds before war horns, discordant and useless. A sentry’s mangled body crashes from over the barricade straight onto a foot soldier’s tent, a teenager unlucky enough to be stuck stationed near the outskirts. And unlucky enough an instant after to be run through with an elegantly, cruelly curved Srengi sword.

That instant, though too late to save the soldier’s life, is enough for the entire army to get in formation. Some are unarmored, shoving squires aside as they ready their weapons. Healers and prostitutes run for cover. But there is no cover to be found: Srengi soldier after Srengi soldier pour into camp, the barricade no match for one strike of their leader’s distinctive morningstar.

“To Blaiddyd,” Marianne shouts at a pegasus rider, already half in the air. The other woman offers her a curt nod and takes flight, aiming her steed in the direction of the royal army’s camp. The pegasus’s hooves knock empty lunch bowls off the tables. Crockery smashes against the frozen solid dirt like war drums.

“Could they have ambushed the Blaiddyd camp too?” Mercedes asks, heart hammering. “What if…”

Marianne shakes her head. Her own troops have already assembled around her, neat in formation with their shields close to their chests. “’What if’ won’t help us. Hope might. For Edmund! For the Kingdom!” Marianne cries. Her troops echo her in unison, deep and vengeful, and both the Edmund battalion and Edmund general disappear into the fray.

“Their commander is here,” Dorothea to her side reminds her. “They want Gautier, Mercedes. They’ll want _you_.”

With those ominous words, Dorothea runs off towards the medical tent, not even glancing at three Srengi soldiers rushing through the melted snow as she electrocutes the puddles beneath their feet. They crumple, fingertips still twitching around their swords.

Linhardt says nothing, casting Mercedes a long look before he follows his wife into the skirmish she has already joined. Dorothea’s hair whips around her, her foolishly bare back exposed, skin free of blemish or scar.

“Margravine!” Mercedes’s lieutenant materializes to her left, and Mercedes’s distracted thoughts fly from her mind. The woman’s blue armor has already been stained red with blood. “Your orders!”

The camp is aflame.

“Help the Count and Countess evacuate the medical tent,” Mercedes says. Get them to higher ground. Send half your troops ahead to the east foothills to clean out any opposition and organize a mobile defense for the injured until you see Countess von Hevring fire a bolt of Thoron to the north. She’ll go with that first party.” Dorothea’s discussed this emergency plan before; Mercedes only hopes she remembers it.

While she issues those commands, both Mercedes and her lieutenant pick off screaming Srengi. Arrows and spells. Blood and bodies. Snow and skin melt under magefire.

Black magic reacts to everything that can be destroyed.

“Understood,” the lieutenant says, firing another arrow through a distant warrior’s eye. Then she’s off, and Mercedes is left alone.

But not for long.

Her bow, never a distant companion, saves her simply by existing: Mercedes bends to the side and reaches for it; the table next to her shatters under shining, heavy spikes.

With one hand, Mercedes punches a fire spell its direction. With the other, she raises her weapon. Yew and bowstring will be no match for this nameless commander’s morningstar nor the plate armor on his chest, but she hears the sizzle of seared flesh as her spell miraculously hits its mark. A Srengi word spat with so much venom it can only be a curse rumbles too deep, too close, and Mercedes scrambles away, flinging spell after spell behind her.

Her pursuer laughs in time with his heavy bootsteps. Air whistles and bones crunch as soldiers meet his morningstar and their demises. “ _Even_ this _Gautier is a coward_ ,” he shouts in his own language. A Srengi myrmidon blocking Mercedes’s path wastes a second to chuckle. She shoots him in the mouth and sets him ablaze as his laughter turns to garbled screams.

Mercedes reaches the trampled ground where the medical tent once stood. Punctured dirt provides the only evidence of its tent poles, and even they’re mostly hidden by slush. Good; Dorothea’s plan is well under way. Mercedes trips over scorched corpses and a whimpering Srengi. “Be at peace,” Mercedes whispers, and sets all those bodies aflame. Their deaths become her blazing shield, and she turns on her heel to face her fears.

On the other side of her circle of fire looms the Srengi commander.

He grins over the flames. Blood and spells have blackened the tips of his oak-brown beard. His biceps fare no better, scored with fresh punctures and slices and burns, but he casually hefts his weapon over his injured shoulder like no battle rages behind him.

“ _Let us end this violence,_ ” Mercedes says in her halting Srengi. She cups her hands and extends them in front of her in what her studies taught her is a Srengi gesture of peace, a request to parley.

Hope blossoms in her chest as the commander’s eyes widen and his lips part in shock, but his howls of laughter soon crush it. “ _The Gautier girl can speak_!” he crows. He shifts his stance and Mercedes skitters back without meaning to. His grin widens into a leer.

“ _My name is Mercedes von Martritz_ ,” she says. “ _I am… I lead this army_.”

Distant steel and silver clang and sing. The commander pays the violence no mind, and Mercedes can hardly hear the cacophony anyway over the sound of her blood thundering in her ears.

No matter: no one approaches the circle of burning bodies. Mercedes tries not to choke on the sweet stench as she speaks. “ _Your… quarrel is with Gautier_. _Your quarrel is… is with… is with me_.”

Curse this language, more infected on her tongue than inflected in its cases!

“ _The man I quarreled with is already dead_ ,” the commander says, almost too fluidly for Mercedes to catch the words. “ _Yet still Sreng suffers for Gautier’s greed_.”

“ _He is not yet dead_!” Mercedes spits back. The flames grow higher, hungrily eating corpses, ashes, and grass. “ _And he seeks the conflict, the…he fights for ends_ —”

Saints preserve her. Adrenaline cannot replace diligence and studies. The Srengi commander heaves a dramatic sigh like he’s a professor disappointed in her for her negligent studies, too. “ _Pity about that one_ ,” she thinks he says, “ _but the man_ I _quarreled with died an old man, feeble as his son but stronger in his youth. Stole my country in bites_ —” the commander is using vocabulary she doesn’t know, something using metaphor and poetic phrasing, no doubt, “— _to die at home, in bed. A coward. A Gautier._ ”

Mercedes’s stomach bubbles. Inconvenient, inconsiderate. The child’s not half grown and she already wants to scold it.

How brave of her child to not _care_. Her Gautier child.

Mercedes, hysterical like she’s never been, cackles. The commander in front of her, warming his free hand against the roaring flames like he’s testing their heat, frowns. “ _My… apologize for his former Margrave’s rudeness_ ,” she stammers. “ _I remedy it for him. A proper duel for you, for his name and your land. For our people’s their peace. Duel me, commander of Sreng_.”

The commander stares. His hand drops to his side. Mercedes’s heart hammers, hammers, hammers— _broken ribcage, collapsed lung, saved arm_ –while the camp burns and soldiers flee, die, kill. That awful morningstar remains in the Srengi’s relaxed grip, slung over his shoulder like a traveling pack.

And then he laughs.

Dread and sweat trickle down Mercedes’s spine vertebra by vertebra. His laughs choke into wheezes, mingling with confused shouts from unseen soldiers in the distance. The sound of approaching footsteps grows in volume. Mercedes cannot tell if she wants them to hurry up or slow down, nor to whom they belong.

“ _Is that so_? Duel _you? The Gautier woman who leads this army wishes for me to_ duel _her_?”

No.

That isn’t what he’s said.

Amine’s face, petrified by fear, swims to the surface of her panicked mind.

That wasn’t what _Mercedes_ had said.

At last, the Srengi commander hoists his morningstar off his shoulder. He pokes it through the flames; Mercedes leaps back, but no, it wasn’t an attack. They both watch the steel glow white-hot as he heats it in her protective blaze like a meat skewer.

“ _You asked so politely_ ,” the commander says, laughter still tickling the tone of his deep voice. “ _Your Srengi is so good, woman of Gautier. It would be my pleasure to kill you_.”

To the sound of approaching footsteps the commander raises his blazing weapon, and brings it down through her corpse-fueled shield, steel spikes white and red in a world gone blue, green, incandescent, and trembling around the edges.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ALWAYS wear protection, kiddos! yes that includes armor
> 
> oh, right, here's info for the Hilspar kids for those who are interested:
> 
> -Hendrik Westenberg Goneril, age 7  
> -Marten Paul Goneril, age 6  
> -Tiege Baldric Goneril, age 3  
> -Kallani Rose Goneril, brand-spanking-newborn
> 
> No, none of them have Crests!


	17. Blue Sea Moon, 1195 - Horsebow Moon, 1195

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Told ya I was speedy! Happy new year! Thank you for being so patient & trusting me and, of course, for your oh-so-wonderful comments that I tend to reread.

The morningstar flashes white through the red-hot flames, and the world seems to slow down in a blaze of green light. Mercedes’s limbs move as if spiraling through water, too slowly and imprecise, her vision awash in dizzying patterns fueled by fear.

A burst of magic. A familiar _clang_ of metal meeting holy steel. Strands of green hair replace the pinpricks of green light in front of her. From beyond a billowing white cape, the glint of a shield embossed with the Crest of Seiros shoves the Srengi commander’s morningstar aside, the Sword of the Creator unraveling around it like a serpent and retracting to its own hilt. The commander staggers back, skin sparking white-gold with an Aura spell she hadn’t even seen the Archbishop cast.

The Archbishop himself flicks his eyes over to her, giving her body a once-over. “Good?” he asks, and Mercedes offers a silent, numb nod. “Good.” His attention returns to the commander of the Srengi army, who has rallied his senses and begun swiping his bare hand through the last remnants of the faith spell like the pesky summer gnats that have never braved Sreng’s chill.

Mercedes snaps to attention too. She blasts a wind spell at him, keeping him at bay for another precious instant. The Archbishop backs her up with a bolt of thunder. Back and forth they trade magical blows, the Srengi commander bellowing unfamiliar words Mercedes knows must be ugly curses.

Except for their single battalion of dark mages yet to emerge, Sreng does not specialize in magic. Whether their people simply lack an aptitude for it or their culture prioritizes melee combat Mercedes does not know; either way, their soldiers have always been susceptible to even the mildest of spells. Srengi shieldbearers have learned the proper ways to repel magic and their lithe swordsmasters excel at predicting magical paths to dodge. But this commander carries no arms but his single morningstar, his muscles too bulky and slow in their power to move quickly, and all he can do is focus on slashing through the heat and gusts while new cuts slice into his skin and armor.

Mercedes grows more winded by the second, but relief soon replaces fear in her choked breaths. Kingdom-blue armor soon joins the ranks of Church-white garb she now recognizes pouring through the camp. Their joined forces batter Sreng’s aside, their gold-green numbers dwindling.

Her foe appears to notice, too, judging by the wild-eyed glare he casts over his shoulder. Distracted, he slips in the mud. Only a stumble, one he quickly rights, but the Archbishop always knew an opening when he saw one, and now is no different. The Sword of the Creator ensnares the morningstar yet again. One flick of the Archbishop’s wrist tugs it out of the Srengi commander’s grip; another sends it hurtling across the camp-turned-battlefield. Mercedes pushes her hands together and out, inhaling sharply to ready one final burst of fire.

The disarmed Srengi commander shouts a word she does know: _retreat_.

It’s magic on its own. All the remaining Srengi troops disengage and run; the less graceful or inexperienced aren’t quick enough for Kingdom weapons, but none of their allies stop to help or wreak vengeance. Their commander ducks, the scent of singed hair the only proof of Mercedes’s spell finding its mark, and although the Archbishop reels back to ready another strike of the Sword of the Creator, the other man proves equally fast when he needs to be. Speedier than Mercedes could believe from an injured man, he flees, not even pausing his stride when he rescues the morningstar only a breath after it lands.

“Let them go,” the Archbishop tells her before Mercedes can even raise her voice. “We’ll only waste our troops by following, and you sent your battalion ahead, didn’t you? We’ll be at a disadvantage following Sreng into their own planned escape route.”

Confident and stern as always, her old Professor. Mercedes considers objecting, but the plaintive expression lining his features stops the thought halfway out of her mouth. Instead, she nods, and the relief on his face is so obvious she flinches. “Hold!” she shouts to their remaining troops. Those who’d begun to give chase skitter to a halt. She ignores their puzzled expressions and turns to the Archbishop instead.

“Please command your troops to follow mine and relay this…request to the King, should he wish to move camp too,” she says. The Archbishop offers no objection; no, he’s already walking. Mercedes stares after his determined stride until she remembers safety isn't certain even now; she calls to her remaining soldiers once more. “To the foothills,” she explains when they’ve gathered around her in proper formation. “Count and Countess von Hevring have relocated the infirmary there with a small battalion of their own.”

“Permission to speak freely, Margravine Gautier,” a captain pipes up. 

"Granted."

“We’ll not be able to bring our entire army all at once, nor do I think it wise. The Srengi are fond of ambushes.” He glances around the other soldiers, as though looking for validation from the low-ranking soldiers under his command. Whatever he sees reassures him. He continues: “If we can take time to salvage what remains of camp and take different paths in mixed battalions…”

Mercedes nods when he trails off. “Yes, thank you, Captain. We’ll discuss with the Church of Seiros’s scouts for optimal routes and split into appropriate n—oh, but we must have some remain behind,” she remembers unhappily. “Within Macuille. We must reinforce their current numbers stationed there.”

She studies the captain who spoke; he lifts his chin under her scrutinizing stare. “Your battalion,” she decides. “It seems to me you know the location of our second location.”

He nods. “Count von Hevring confided it in me shortly before the attack. A day or so he’d received direct orders from Spymaster Shamir to share intel with a competent Gautier battalion he trusted, and I had the honor of being his confidante.”

“I see,” Mercedes lies. Linhardt of all people seems an odd choice for Shamir’s correspondence, but then again, Dorothea had ‘made herself scarce,’ hadn’t she? It would make sense that any plan she had concocted with Mercedes had been shared with Linhardt, and thus with the Church of Seiros under the guise of ‘Count von Hevring…”

And speaking of Shamir, Mercedes must meet with her scouts to plan new routes. She asks— _orders_ her soldiers to begin preparations to march and return to the former infirmary within the hour. The Archbishop is nowhere to be found, but Shamir’s head scout is. Together with Marianne, they reorganize their battalions, routes and schedules. By the time Mercedes returns to meet with her troops, every single soldier is punctual and at the ready.

“By your orders, Margravine,” the captain of the Macuille unit says, saluting with his fist to his chest, and Mercedes keeps her tears from falling.

 _I am the Margravine now_.

* * *

Mercedes leads her skittish troops up the hills with her head held high and bow at the ready. Southern Sreng’s and Northeastern Gautier’s trees are sparse with scraggly branches, but that’s never seemed to hinder Srengi ambushes’ movements. She doesn’t know how caravans and battalions have constantly been taken by surprise.

“I suspect it’s the fog,” the Archbishop muses aloud as they march.

Mercedes squints at the clear, if grey, sky. “The fog?”

“They’ve got dark mages, don't they? Do you remember during the war, the—or perhaps the Gaspard rebellion? No, it was most certainly the war…” The Archbishop’s eyes go as cloudy as the magical fog he’s struggling to describe. Mercedes considers asking after his health before he shakes himself and the absent expression wipes itself clean. “I can check with Shamir, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they bring that battalion with to summon fog before launching their attacks. Those caravans and soldiers would be taken by surprise, since they’d be so used to the landscape lacking reasonable cover.”

“I wonder where they’ve recruited the mages from,” Mercedes mumbles. The Archbishop shrugs, an almost imperceptible twitch of his shoulders.

“Perhaps they weren’t recruited but trained. Technology and tactics always change during war. And there’s been a lot of war lately.” He fixes her with a piercing stare, so abruptly her next step falters. “Not every Imperial general who survived the war surrendered or assimilated.”

Mercedes frowns. A scout’s whistle cuts off any question she could ask. “We’ve arrived,” she says needlessly. More scouts usher their small party of Gautier and Church soldiers into the infirmary’s new camp.

“You’re safe!” is the first cry Mercedes hears over the groans of pain from the injured, and the next thing she knows is the scent of Dorothea’s perfume mixed with sweat, her arms thrown around Mercedes’s aching shoulders.

“I’m just fine,” Mercedes reassures her. “Dorothea, I’m so sorry, but if you don’t mind…” She taps Dorothea’s own shoulders, and Dorothea gets the hint, releasing her with a flurry of apologies, too.

It’s hardly her shoulders that are the problem, actually. It’s the way Dorothea’s hastily-applied leather cuirass presses into the bump on her stomach. How had she never noticed it was there?

Willful ignorance, maybe. Belated panic rushes through Mercedes’s lungs, the too-recent memory of that hulking general, the searing-hot morningstar she can almost feel, the Archbishop’s timely rescue…

She wants to be sick. And not for the usual reason.

“Don’t worry about me,” she tries to tell Dorothea in a thick voice, but Dorothea’s frozen in front of her.

“Archbishop,” she says, her lips barely moving.

“Dorothea,” the Archbishop greets her, nodding. “Good to see you alive.”

Dorothea flinches like he’s insulted her, but he only looks shocked, those hilariously obvious widened eyes and dropped jaw of his—the only one of his expressions that’s ever been expressive.

Shamir must have known. There’s no way she hadn’t dug that information up and informed him; odd. Well, Mercedes will do her best to console Dorothea later. For now, they must update her on the situation. She does as succinctly as possible—the troop movements, the stalemate of a battle, the itinerary—but isn’t sure how much Dorothea will retain. Dorothea's eyes flit everywhere but the Archbishop’s face, lingering more frequently on the Church of Seiros troops now settling in with their gear.

“The Archbishop saved my life,” Mercedes says softly when she’s shared as much information as she can recall. Dorothea snaps back to attention, scanning Mercedes’s body in much the same manner the Archbishop had. Mercedes offers him a watery smile, even though he’s frowning at a tear in his sleeve like it’s the most offensive thing in camp. “Ah, how rude of me—I didn’t thank you yet. So I simply must say—”

The Archbishop offers another subtle, jerky shrug and goes back to fiddling with the loose threads. He doesn’t glance up. “I’m just relieved you’re safe, too.”

Dorothea, bouncing on her heels, looks like she wants to be anywhere but here. “I’ll go check with L—the infirmary,” she titters in a high-pitched manner quite unlike her. “I’m certain they need plenty of help.” Neither Mercedes nor the Archbishop stop her, though Mercedes forces what she hopes is a soothing grin onto her lips.

“One thing has been bothering me, Your Excellency,” Mercedes says when the Archbishop looks like he also wishes to escape and attend to important duties such as mending his sleeve. “Well, not _bothering_ so much as—I’m ever so grateful, of course!”

His head shoots up; he eyes her warily. “Don’t worry about it.”

It almost sounds like a command. Mercedes pushes on regardless. “It’s just… Your troops arrived so suddenly. Your rescue was, ah, if you hadn’t been there… We surely would have lost. I would have…” Mercedes’s fingers twitch in the direction of her stomach, but she manages to restrain them. “I would have died.”

Something shutters behind the Archbishop’s eyes. “Thank the Goddess you didn’t,” is all he says.

“Yes, thank Her indeed,” Mercedes says more impatiently than is probably respectful, “but how? His Majesty’s troops had only set up camp recently; I thought you’d planned to camp a half-day’s march away, and you’d arrived after them.”

“You sent a pegasus messenger,” the Archbishop reminds her, gracing her with a faint smile.

“Ah! Right,” Mercedes remembers, trying not to squeeze her eyes shut in embarrassment. “I sound so ungrateful,” she laughs. “I simply… You know how scattered I can be, and I’ve only improved my memory these days by asking things over and over. It’s a silly habit for a margravine, yes, but…”

“It’s no trouble.”

They both excuse themselves without further awkwardness. Much to her relief, Mercedes finds her tent already set up, complete with a war table, stool, parchment, inkwell, and quills. She’ll write to Sylvain and tell him of their growing child, and pray to the Goddess, the Saints, and the Ten Elites he trusts the messengers already on the way enough to know he must not join her here.

Halfway through reminding him they have two children who need him home, Mercedes remembers Marianne had sent the pegasus messenger to Dimitri’s camp, not the Church’s camp. None of Shamir’s scouts had mentioned a pegasus rider when she’d asked them to report.

Mercedes’s ink dries mid-sentence while she struggles to sift through those terrifying, colorful memories before the Sreng commander’s killing blow and the Archbishop’s miraculous rescue.

_Thank the Goddess._

_Thank the Goddess indeed._

* * *

Sylvain’s response arrives quickly. For the first time, Mercedes doesn’t snatch it out of the messenger’s hands to devour immediately. Instead, she stares at the messenger himself.

“I hardly recognize you,” is all she manages to stutter. Cyril rubs the back of his head bashfully, as if the neatly trimmed beard curving along his jaw isn’t the newer and more interesting hair he has.

“I wasn’t gonna stay a little kid forever,” he replies with the barest hint of the defensiveness she remembers from the war. “Here. Letter for ya. Comes with a package.”

Now Mercedes does grab the single envelope; all the other people she might have needed to correspond with are here at camp or reporting to other generals. It’s a thick one; dread drips from Mercedes’s heart to bubble in her stomach. “It certainly feels like a package,” she fakes a laugh. Cyril shakes his head.

“That tiny thing? Nah. Your real parcel’s way bigger. And louder.” He wrinkles his nose and waves in the vague direction of the training dummies set up two days ago. “Your problem now. I wanna go see Shamir.” He’s off without another word, leaving Mercedes holding her not-a-parcel letter and knowledge of a mysterious distant package.

Well, Sylvain presumably will have given her an explanation. She hurries back to her tent, wax clogging her dirty nails as she tears off the seal.

* * *

_Love of my life,_

_I’ve written this letter ten times and it’s still not going to come out right. There’s so much I want to say, but I’ll try to keep it short for once. Just know that I love you. I trust you. I miss you. We all miss you. I’ll be so happy when you’re home safe. And I’ll protect our kids and our land with everything I have until you are._

_I’m struggling to keep this simple, because I really have written this over and over. If I sound kind of emotionless, it’s the exact opposite, I promise. I’m just trying not to overwhelm you when you’re already doing so much. I know how you felt now during my first campaign.  
_

_My mother died the other week. She never let the healers in, not once, but she’d allowed the maids to bring her meals, so they came in one morning to find her unresponsive in bed. So that was the first time the healers were able to get inside to see her, I guess. Too late, though.  
_

_They said something about a blood clot; it was probably related to that bad fall she had. They didn’t dare mention it, but in her case? Definitely avoidable if she’d just let them see her._

_I’m going on and on about this and wasting parchment again. Sorry._

_I don’t really know how you’ll take that news, but Amine and Solaina are kind of confused. They already didn’t see her much, so I guess they didn’t know her as well as any of us would have liked, but they see the whole castle being really quiet and have gotten super somber and awkward, too. It’s a little funny having Solaina shush me for being too loud if I ever laugh at something, but also a little depressing._

_I talked it over with Felix and Ingrid, even some of my advisors, and we held the funeral yesterday since we’re not sure how much longer the war would go on. I’m sorry we didn’t wait for you; I don’t think anyone judged us for it, though I don’t really care anymore about stuff like that. Guess that’s what getting older does to someone, huh? Anyway, her ashes are in the family crypt next to my father’s._

_Now more than ever I know what needs protecting, and it’s my family. My children. You. And I know that means staying home and keeping everyone safe, okay? You don’t have to worry about me charging heroically/attractively into battle just to get in the way of my competent wife and army._

_So I sent someone who can actually be useful to you. Not much of a hero or attractive, at least in my opinion, but he showed up last month to give me a personal talking-to for not keeping up to date with every facet of his life and was pretty appalled to learn you weren’t here to admire the lecture yourself. In my opinion, he was a little_ too _eager to leave the doom and gloom of Gautier when I asked if he could go join you all. I brought it up just for my own peace of mind, sending someone I know personally and can trust, but I guess just one month cooped up in the castle was one month too many for him. Felt more like I was doing_ him _a favor._

_Don’t let Caspar get himself killed either, okay? He’s apparently got a giant family of doting wife and accidental babies to protect, too._

_All my (loquacious) love and more,_

_Sylvain_

* * *

“Hey! Camp grease looks good on you, pal!”

Mercedes smiles in spite of herself and watches the training dummy fall to pieces under Caspar’s bare fists. “I ran out of moisturizer weeks ago,” she tells him. “I would give you a hug hello, but I’m afraid I’m a bit fragrant.”

Caspar smiles too, a baring of teeth that always manages to look more feral than friendly. But the chirp in his voice when he speaks belies his good cheer: “A bit pregnant, more like. I don’t wanna hurt you, but I'm not gonna care about your _fragrance_. You know nothing gets me going like the smell of fighting!”

Caspar has always been oblivious in his flirting. The ridiculous things he says to women and men alike could so easily be taken as lust for flesh. _Lust for battle can have the same phrasing_ , a dark thought pipes up in Mercedes’s mind, and she pushes it aside. “Have you been well?”

Caspar shrugs and moves onto his post-training stretches. “Yeah, Sylvain was a good host. I’d been on the road a while, so I admit it was nice to have some hot meals and a comfortable bed for once. Was really freezing my ass off on the way over, though. Dunno how you all stand it.”

“’For a while?’ When did you leave Goneril?”

“Uh.” Caspar’s sheepish grin explains it all, but he does anyway: “Maybe halfway through Hilda’s pregnancy? I don’t know if Dorothea told you anything, but she can be kinda…”

Mercedes represses a sigh. Lecturing Caspar, interfering with his marriage, and spreading gossip about Hilda is not how she wants to begin their reunion after too many years. Gratitude for her own husband’s unconditional support even through their mutual terror fills her heart, and focusing on that seems preferable. And speaking of Sylvain’s support… “Thank you for coming anyway.”

“Yeah, of course!” Caspar finishes his stretches and bounces on his feet. “Seriously, I could use a good fight. Someone more punchable than Holst, you know? And being on the winning side of the Faerghus army feels pretty good already. Did Cyril tell you we got ambushed on the way over?”

Mercedes’s mouth goes dry. “No. He didn’t.”

Caspar droops. “Damn. I took out like, half their guys on my own.” He brightens again due to sudden, Caspar-like delight in victory, and Mercedes hopes his enthusiasm is contagious to the rest of the troops. “Well, that’s what matters, right? Winning? No one got hurt. No one but the Srengi, I guess.”

“No one? Is that really true?”

That feral smile again. “Damn straight. This huge bank of fog suddenly rolled on in out of nowhere, and half the battalion was just Shamir and Cyril’s troops, so that’s maybe fifteen archers, you know? I’m one of the few front-line soldiers, too. So then Srengi myrmidons started pouring out of the fog the second everyone started freaking out; it had to have been magic, because it was way too convenient. Plus, I’ve seen Linhardt practice that kind of spell before. Sure tasted like it, ugh.”

The Archbishop, it seems, was right. But what else is new?

“Not that I’ve _intentionally_ tasted magical fog!” Caspar hurries to justify himself, like Mercedes’s blank expression means judgment, not comprehension. “It just really clogs up your mouth, you know? Most soldiers haven’t dealt with it before and panic; plus, archers are really useless in it. But I saw it in time,” his chest puffs out, “and warned everyone. Hit 'em hard the second they showed themselves, pretty much. Me and the other grapplers and swordmasters took care of them before they could scream. And I _definitely_ pulled out a scrap of mage robe caught in my gauntlets after we left ‘em to rot.”

“Thank you,” Mercedes manages to say. “Please forgive me, I just… I’m so relieved to hear all this. The Archbishop had his suspicions, but most of the ambushes end… poorly for us. I’m sure he’ll be just as delighted to have confirmation.”

“Sure. I’ll tell him later.”

Cyril will doubtlessly have taken care of that by simple virtue of speaking to Shamir, but it’s so refreshing to hear a former Adrestian speak well of the Archbishop that Mercedes only beams.

“Let’s go get some grub,” Caspar suggests, though he’s already walking. “Really worked up an appetite after all this marching and training, you know? And I’m sure you’re starving.”

Mercedes, still thinking about his description of the attack, doesn’t reply fast enough. Caspar smacks his palm against his forehead.

“Shit, that was rude. It’s just Hilda gets these cravings all the time, and I figured—uh, shit, I still don’t know what I’m saying.”

“No, no, that’s not it at all! I’m only…” Mercedes trails off. She is hungry, yes, but she’s never suffered overmuch from cravings. It’s been the nausea, mostly, though as the months have gone on, her third pregnancy seems to be kinder and easing up.

“Still with me? Mercedes?”

“Oh! I’m so sorry.” Mercedes tries not to facepalm now, too. “I’m only thinking about what you said…”

“What I said? I said a lot.”

True. But…

Mercedes drops her voice, hushed enough Caspar has to lean close to hear. “About being on the ‘winning’ side.” Her steps slow, and Caspar, already shortening his stride, practically comes to a crawl beside her. “We’ve been at a stalemate since our own ambush, the one on our base camp. Your attack has been the only one we’ve had. Even before that, we’ve been constantly on the defensive without having the faintest clue how we can end this conflict.”

Caspar frowns. “Man, war’s changed you more than I thought,” he comments. “You barely sound like my old pal Mercedes.”

Despite the somber conversation, Mercedes fights a grin, then decides to let it happen. His cheer really is infectious. “I’ve been trying to pay more attention during tactics meetings,” she admits. “I’m very relieved to hear it shows, ah, ‘pal.’” Their reinforcements arrive in a steady trickle each day, just as they’ve all hoped, but the paranoid knot in Mercedes’s chest refuses to unravel. She keeps this thought, however, to herself.

They finally reach the small mess tent, the mood lightening. Caspar, distracted, says absently, “Yeah, of course!” 

“Margravine,” the cook greets her, beckoning the two of them over. He slops some gruel into their bowls—chunkier than usual, Mercedes notes with embarrassing excitement—and returns to serving the rest of the waiting soldiers.

“Aw, yeah, love cutting the line with a noble,” Caspar crows. Noisy slurps rattle his spoon before they even sit down. “I think I’m gonna like it here, Mercedes.”

“Hm.”

Despite his sort-of compliment about her budding commander skills, Caspar clearly hasn’t heard her warning about the state of affairs, their army’s confusion and waning morale. Perhaps that’s a good thing.

Faith, after all, relies on believing in success regardless of proof, in both magic and in prayer.

* * *

The Horsebow Moon wanes in suspicious silence.

All of Macuille’s reinforcements have settled. Half of the remaining Gautier and Church of Seiros troops have made their way to the infirmary base. The royal army has reinstated itself on the opposite hill. Both their base and Mercedes’s have a clear vantage point of the castle town and its many outlying quarries. The farms are more distant, but scouts report the only violence they’ve seen has been from looters and scavengers. Even those incidents are rare.

Mercedes, seven months pregnant, agrees with Linhardt’s, Dorothea’s, Marianne’s, and the Archbishop’s firm ‘suggestions’ she limit her assistance to the infirmary, although their exhausted relief is genuine. The lack of battles doesn’t mean they lack injured soldiers. If they are not to search Sreng blindly for the vanished army, their energy can at least be spent focusing on their remaining resources.

Caspar trains with the most vigor out of anyone in the army. His frustration about the lack of action encourages other soldiers to keep up their routines, and for that alone he has Mercedes's gratitude. One never knows when the calm before the storm welcomes the storm itself.

Mercedes, Marianne, Linhardt, Dorothea, and the Archbishop are therefore unsurprised when, in the last flickers of the Horsebow Moon’s final autumn sunset, the fog rolls into camp.


End file.
